The House of Hades
by Hydroflare
Summary: This is my version of the House of Hades I do not own the characters they belong to Rick Riordan. Sorry for OOC-ness!
1. I

**I**

**Percy**

Annabeth yelled, "Percy, cut the string!"

Percy reached into his pocket and cursed. Riptide still hadn't come back. He yelled, "I still don't have Riptide!"

Annabeth cursed and said, "OK, then. We'll just fall into Tartarus while Arachne reels us in, right?"

"What? I don't have control over when my pen returns to my pocket!"

Annabeth stayed silent.

"Alright, then. Tartarus is an endless pit, so let's just rest up, okay?"

Percy's eyes closed, and his dreams were not good.

The romans were in another run-down building, listening to Reyna while she drew on a piece of parchment, finishing the attack plan for the ambush on Camp Half-Blood.

"And so the first and second cohorts shall attempt to secure the big house from the north, and the third, fourth and fifth cohorts shall attack the cabins and flush the campers out here."

She drew crosses over the cabins and the big house, and drew a huge circle where the climbing wall was… except that there wasn't a climbing wall on her map.

"Then we shall regroup there and attack them for destroying our camp!"

The Romans cheered.

"Praetor, you shall stay here."

Percy was puzzled when he heard that. Who was the other praetor?

His puzzlement turned to anger as a shadow stepped out from the darkness and said, "But, my colleague-"

Percy recognized that voice.

It was HIS voice.

Octavian continued, "I would like to lead the attack myself, my colleague."

Reyna glared at him-a wolflike glare that said_ If you do not do as I say I will personally stuff you in a meat-flavored sack and throw you to the wolves._

Octavian grumbled and walked off. Even he wasn't stupid enough veto Reyna's orders.

Percy was worried. The Romans were almost ready. They wouldn't have enough time to get the Athena Parthenos back to Camp and stop the attack. He was about to open his eyes when he hit something hard, and blacked out.

When he came to, he found that he was on a huge ledge overlooking the abyss. Annabeth was nowhere to be seen.

Tears sprang to his eyes. He'd been with Annabeth for only a couple of minutes, and now she was gone again.

He stood up and gasped. In front of him was a huge cave opening almost 60 feet tall… and it was collapsing. A sign next to it said, 'To the Doors'. Percy was close. He was so close.

The cave was now only 50 feet high, and still growing smaller.

"Ohh…I'm supposed to go in before it shuts."

Percy ran for the opening and leapt through just as the opening closed…and got his leg stuck.

"Argh. Now what?"

He tried pulling his leg out. No effect. The soil was too heavy. He felt around in his pocket, and his pen was there. He uncapped it, and touched it at the opening. Immediately, his leg loosened and he tumbled onto the ground.

"Where am I?" he asked himself.

He looked around and saw three hallways. An inscription on the ground read:

_One leads to the place you seek. The others lead to certain death._

"Well, that was happy and jolly, but which is the right passage?" Percy muttered under his breath.

As if on cue, his sword glowed and tugged at him.

"Get back here, I'm trying to think…" Percy reeled the sword back in, but it kept on tugging. It seemed to be pulling him toward… the middle hallway?

"All right, here goes nothing." Percy said. He stepped into the middle hallway. All of a sudden gates came crashing down behind him.

"Ohh-kay. I guess I'll be staying here for a while." Percy said.

He kept walking onward and realized that he was alone. He cursed. He'd have to close the Doors by himself, unless he found Annabeth along the way.

The hallway was narrow, and pretty soon he was walking sideways, his body squished between the walls. He sure was glad that Frank wasn't here. He would have been left behind.

As the hallway grew wider again, he found himself now in a huge room with torches lighting the walls. A corridor was at the other end of the room.

"No defenses? No opposition? This is just too easy." Percy said to himself.

When he reached the middle of the room, the ground shook. Percy kept his balance as 20 skeleton warriors crawled out of fissures that expanded out of the ground. As soon as the skeletons crawled out, the fissures sealed themselves. Percy shuddered. He'd had his own share of bad experiences with skeleton warriors before.

The skeleton warriors ripped their ribs out. Percy winced. They held the ribs like knives, ready for battle-20 skeleton warriors that couldn't die, against one son of Poseidon, away from any water source.

"Oh, great. So _here's_ the trap." Percy said.


	2. II

**II**

**Percy**

Percy judged his escape options.

Sadly, there weren't many. The skeletons were in a circle, so even if he managed to get the skeletons blocking the way directly to the doors, the others would stab him in the back.

Hold on…

Percy's fighting instincts took over, and he immediately dodged to the side just as a skeleton behind him stabbed the place where he had been only a millisecond ago. He immediately kicked out at the skeleton that had tried to stab him, and almost immediately had to dodge a volley of ribs that the skeleton army threw at him. Fighting one-on-one was not going to work.

Good news: some of the skeletons' ribs had impaled themselves in the other skeletons and disassembled them. Bad news: the skeletons had already reformed when he finished that thought. He was so dumb; he almost gave himself a head-slap.

This was GAEA's territory, and the skeletons were obviously supporting her. Their self-healing powers would be faster, with them being surrounded by Gaea.

Oh… and Percy's legs were now sinking into the soil. He seriously was getting more stupid.

The skeletons advanced, knowing that their enemy was now powerless to escape. They ripped their ribs off again. Percy winced. These scenes were starting to annoy him. They were too grisly. He had to close his eyes for a moment.

The skeletons took advantage of that, and attacked immediately. It was all Percy could do to deflect them with the flat of his blade. The skeletons could keep going forever, but he could probably only hold out for another 10, 20 minutes. He'd have to remove one of his feet.

He used his free hand to pull his foot. It wouldn't budge.

The skeletons started to reform behind him, and ripped out their second last set of ribs. Just as the last skeleton ripped out its ribs, Percy pulled his foot free with a deafening SQUELCH! He grabbed his sword and used his free foot to pivot backwards. He had to dodge the first few skeletons, but then got the hang of it and managed to spear 5 on his sword at once, then threw them behind him.

The last skeleton charged at him. Percy deflected him with the flat of his blade, but this skeleton was good. It ripped its own rib, and gave Percy a hard time. It almost stabbed Percy in the neck, and then proceeded to slashing, making Percy bend over.

Percy knew that this was his last chance. The earth was up to his knee now.

He used his free foot and kicked the skeleton in the chest, and used both his hands to free his leg.

The skeletons behind him were reforming again, but slower this time. The final skeleton was already almost fully reformed.

He gave his leg a final, mighty tug and it came right out with a SQUELCH even louder and more disgusting than the first one.

The skeletons seemed stunned by the horrible sound, and started covering their ears-at least, where their ears used to be. How they managed to hear without ears, Percy didn't want to know.

He grabbed his sword and made a mad dash for the exit, but he had already used up most of his energy, and the earth sucked at his feet every time he hit the ground, and slowly, he got weaker and weaker. He got to the door as the skeletons started to regroup.

He used all of his strength to pull open the doors. All of a sudden, he heard a rumbling sound.

He almost screamed in fear as the ceiling cracked and collapsed. Skeletons chattered in anger as several hundred tons of rock fell on top of their heads.

Unfortunately, a boulder flattened his leg and crushed it on the ground. A sharp pain shot up his leg.

"OW!" he yelled.

He was trapped in this room.

All of a sudden, the floor creaked and gave way.

Percy fell down, and felt a bright light shine into his eyes. After that, he heard wings flapping above him.

All of a sudden, he saw an arrow hurtle past his cheek. Wait… it wasn't an arrow. It was a feather.

Grey feathers stuck to the walls of the pit, narrowly avoiding Percy's arms and legs. Percy looked up and saw a huge grey cloud of birds flying towards him. Their feathers shone as they dived.

"Great. Stymphalian Birds. Is this day going to get any worse?" Percy muttered.

Percy then realized that the Stymphalian Birds were being forced downwards…by something from above.

From behind the Stymphalian Birds came a rumbling. Percy stared at it closely and realized that the brown behind the birds was…a whole bunch of giant boulders.

"Me and my big fat mouth." Percy muttered.

He realized that there were ledges along the sides of the chamber. He twisted his body so he was falling feet first, and then grabbed onto a hold in the rock. The Stymphalian birds saw this and changed their dive to a more diagonal one.

One bird was faster than the rest. It flew straight in front of Percy and raised its wings. They opened up and hundreds of metallic barbs bristled, point blank, at Percy.

Percy looked back, saw the bird and almost lost his grip. He thought bitterly, _Killed by a stupid metal bird deep in Tartarus. At least let the quest be completed. Let Annabeth be safe._

He knew there was no escape.

He closed his eyes and waited for the moment when all those tiny barbs would shoot out of their sockets.


	3. III

**III**

**ANNABETH**

Annabeth woke up and found that she was falling by herself.

"Percy!" she yelled.

No answer.

She teared up. Why had Percy loosened his grip? Seaweed Brain would never had let her go on purpose.

All of a sudden, she remembered her dream. She gasped. She could still hear the inhuman voice whispering to her, taunting her.

_Come with me to Tartarus, my little hero. I guess children of Athena aren't as good as they seem._

She saw a ledge near the left side of the pit and immediately her fighting instincts kicked in. She twisted and landed on the ledge. In front of her loomed a giant cave opening.

She tensed. Something about this cave did not feel friendly. A second later, she realized why.

She heard the scuttling of tiny legs, and the hiss of a past 'friend' that she did not want to meet again.

A pair of red dots appeared, and Arachne the weaver stepped forward.

"How nice to meet you again, my dear." she said.

Annabeth stepped backward. Her heart beat so hard; she thought it would burst from her chest.

Spiders crawled over the walls, over the floor until she couldn't see anything apart from the writhing mass of spiders. Annabeth backed away until she was only millimeters from the edge of the overhang. Her heart beat. She wanted to scream, but she couldn't. She knew that the only way to survive this was to overcome her fear. Arachne sharpened her instinct by stepping aside.

Annabeth saw a bag and a dagger lying behind Arachne.

HER bag and dagger.

Her brain roared with anger and she charged at Arachne. Unfortunately, Arachne had been tricky, and she reeled Annabeth in with the string that had latched itself onto her.

Annabeth's legs fell out from under her, and she fell on her back, still reeled in by the string.

"Annabeth," Arachne said. "For tricking me, and for damning me to Tartarus, you shall perish!"

"Annabeth frantically searched for anything that could help her cut the string. Her searching hands touched something hairy. She brought it closer and saw that it was a spider.

For some reason, she wasn't scared, even when the spider hissed and clashed together its pincers. She smashed it against the ground, and before the spider got squashed Annabeth could swear that the spider had a confused look on its face. Arachne hissed in anger.

"You may have overcome your fear of spiders, but I will not let you get away so easily this time!" she snapped her pincers.

Annabeth frantically groped the ground and after a few seconds of fruitless searching, she found a rock. She started to hammer the sharp edge at the string.

Arachne saw this and screeched in anger. She started to reel Annabeth in so quickly that the walls passed in a blur. Annabeth hammered crazily at the string. Just before she came into contact with Arachne's talons, she managed to cut the string. She immediately jumped up and…hesitated. Should she go to her dagger and bag, or back to safety?

Arachne took advantage and sprang at her.

That was one kind of answer: run in any direction you want.

Annabeth ducked and ran towards her bag. Arachne landed and turned around. When she saw Annabeth's target, she screeched in anger and scuttled straight at her. Annabeth could sense it. She spun around on the heel of her foot and karate-kicked the spider in the eye.

Arachne was stunned, probably from shock. Annabeth knew she only had seconds. She grabbed her dagger and backed towards the mouth of the cave.

Arachne came back to a little later than she'd expected. She cursed herself. She could have grabbed her backpack and her dagger at the same time. Now she couldn't.

Arachne shook her head and roared.

Annabeth knew that Arachne now had her cornered. She could only take a few step, then she'd be millimeters away from the drop even further into Tartarus.

Arachne seemed to realize this. Pincers clashing, mouth foaming, she inched slowly towards Annabeth, enjoying the moment.

Annabeth's survival instincts kicked in, and she felt a surge of anger. She was Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena. She would not let this stupid spider get her. With a scream, she charged towards Arachne, and gouged at each of the spider's eyes, one by one, until there was only one healthy one left. She then jumped on top of Arachne's head and ran along her body, and with a big leap, leaped off the spider's abdomen.

Arachne was stunned, but not long enough to let Annabeth carry out her plan. As soon as Annabeth launched off her abdomen, she whipped her head around and fired a long piece of silk at Annabeth, and started to wrap it around her. Annabeth hit the ground hard, swallowing up loads of dust. She coughed. She tried to get up, but it was impossible without her hand to help her. She tried to break free, but the silk was as strong as steel. She heard Arachne scuttle up behind her, hissing in excitement. She was hauled upright, and she could feel Arachne's fangs piercing her neck, her warm breath along her back.

"I'll try to preserve you for as long as you can stand."

Annabeth struggled, pushed outward with all her strength, but to no avail. She stopped struggling and fell limp.  
"Oh, don't struggle. I'll make sure that a tapestry is made of your death. I'll find the right materials even in this Hellhole, don't worry."

Then came the most horrible line.

"Annabeth, daughter of Athena, you will never leave this cave alive."

Arachne rose up one of her spiny legs and jabbed her in the head. Annabeth couldn't withstand the pain.

She blacked out.


	4. IV

**IV**

**ANNABETH**

Annabeth woke up and tried to grasp her surroundings, but when she opened her eyes, all she saw was pitch black.

Suddenly, a beam of light shone through the wall and onto her face. Wait…not a hole. A door.

Her least favorite spider came over to her and hissed, "So you're finally awake. You could only have lasted another day or two, anyways."

Annabeth swallowed. She asked, "How long have I been out, then?"

Arachne hissed-or laughed, but she probably couldn't, with those oversized pincers. She probably knew that Annabeth couldn't escape her silk. Arachne said, "Time is not normal here; you should know that. However, according to my calculations, you have been out for over 2 days."

Arachne walked out of the cave, closing the door behind her.

Annabeth swallowed. She had been out for _two days_? It had only seemed like half an hour. The dim light had still been shining the exact way that it had when she had been knocked out.

Of course, time was different in monstrous places- and none were more monstrous than this place.

Anyways, she frantically searched for anything that would aid her in her escape. She first fiddled with her hands, wondering what to do, when all of a sudden she realized that her knife was in her hand. She almost laughed out loud. It was a miracle. Arachne not only had left her unguarded, but also had forgotten to disarm her. She could do whatever she could to get out know.

Annabeth got her hand into position and started to carve. She carved and cut, but after half and hour she had made little progress. All she had done, she suspected, was make a tiny groove in the silk. So there was a reason why Arachne thought that she couldn't get away. Annabeth didn't give up, and soon she had made such a deep groove that with one flick of her hand she finally cut through the silk.

Unfortunately, that moment was when Arachne decided to step into the room to check on her.

Arachne let loose a small shriek of shock and immediately yelled, "Spiders! To the prisoner's cave!"

She then walked right up to Annabeth and said, "I _did_ swear on the River Styx that you would never leave alive. Too bad; you're going to die right now. You're too dangerous."

Arachne opened up her fangs. Annabeth struggled against the silk.

Just as Arachne was going to chop her head off, Annabeth felt her bonds loosening, and immediately slipped out of them. Arachne bit air. Annabeth immediately ran for the exit… only to find that it was filled with hissing spiders. Although Annabeth wasn't afraid of spiders anymore, these spiders could still bite her like piranhas. Behind her, Arachne hissed in glee.

"You've survived using your wits and cleverness, but now, you'll have to fight your way out. Where's your _boyfriend_ when you need him?" Arachne taunted.

Annabeth had learned to ignore Arachne's words and now she had already seen a tiny weak spot in the wave of spiders: a long gap in the army. No time. The gap was slowly growing smaller. Annabeth ran for it.

Arachne seemed shocked to find that Annabeth had escaped her cave alive, and didn't even tell her spider army to go attack her. Annabeth didn't really care about that. She dashed through caves and dodged falling stalactites (the ones hanging on the ceiling), not looking back. Just as she reached the entrance/exit, Annabeth hesitated a bit too long. Should she get her bag as well?

Arachne slowly lowered herself onto the floor of the cave, blocking both the entrances to it. She snapped her pincers, knowing that Annabeth was well and truly cornered.

Out of the corner of her eye, Annabeth saw her bag. She ran towards it and scooped it up, slinging it across her shoulder. She then made a mad dash towards Arachne.

Idiotic, right?

Maybe not. Annabeth stabbed Arachne in the side, making the spider lose her balance. Arachne toppled over sideways, leaving the exit free. Annabeth made a mad dash for it, but just as she was going to take the leap of faith, a piece of silk shot past her, wrapped itself around the knife she was holding, and impaled it deep in the wall on the other side of the pit. Annabeth looked back and saw Arachne scuttling towards her, hobbling slightly. Annabeth ran towards her and punched her in the face, then immediately opened up her bag and took out the remnants of the colorful string from her quest to find the Athena Parthenos. She started tying the string together.

For the next minute or so, Annabeth would go up to Arachne and punch her in the face multiple times in order to make sure that Arachne didn't decide to wake up. Finally, she held up a lasso-made out of colorful string. She would only have one shot at this. She spun her lasso over her head and launched it across the chasm. It landed right on the handle of the blade.

Unfortunately, Arachne wasn't down and out. In fact, when Annabeth got the lasso on the handle, she pushed Annabeth off the ledge.

Annabeth gasped and immediately grabbed her bag, which was lying on the floor, before getting hit on the head considerably hard by the wall.

Arachne stood on the ledge above her, cackling evilly. She went back into the cave.

Annabeth looked up. The knife was coming loose. Instinctively she climbed higher up the rope.

All of a sudden, the dagger came out of the wall and, along with Annabeth, fell back into the endless pit.


	5. V

**V**

**Nico**

Nico watched as the sinkhole in the parking lot grew smaller and smaller, and everyone's spirits also went down, down, down. No one spoke a word. Even Leo, who, by this point, would be blaring out jokes in rapid fire like a machine gun, seemed subdued.

_Very_ subdued. So subdued, in fact, that he had already accidentally made Nico's bed fly out of the floor-to-ceiling window and into the ocean, by tilting the boat too sharply to the left. Everyone seemed distracted. Unfortunately for them, they had a quest to finish, and Nico seemed like the only one who had his act together.

Ahead of them, the Ionian sea- the western sea of Greece- shimmered in the afternoon sun.

Leo had bags under his eyes, and looked very weary. Coach Hedge was standing on the deck, leaning against the railings, still mad at himself for not having rescued the pair sooner.

All of a sudden, the boat shuddered and started to fall. The demigods started to run out from their rooms. They all had puffy eyes, red noses and wet hands and clothes.

"What's going on?" Jason asked.

Nico replied, "I don't know! Go check!"

Jason ran back below deck. Nico pulled out his Stygian Iron dagger.

A moment later, Nico heard a scream from below deck, then another one. And another. And another.

Nico shared a glance with his friends, and dashed downstairs. Halfway, they saw Jason. Nico gasped in terror. His shirt was torn, red cut marks were all over his skin, his face was scratched and he was bleeding heavily, but he was grinning like a madman.

"Well, I've sorted out the problem. Let's go."

All of a sudden, a harpy grabbed him at the back and pulled him down the steps. Piper screamed.

"So they _haven't_ been sorted out yet." Leo said.

Piper promptly punched him in the face.

"_What?_" Leo asked.

"Stop arguing." Nico said as he ran towards Jason, blade in hand.

The harpies screeched and scratched him, but he kept slicing, and besides, more harpies were actually bumping into the walls than attacking him. He was soon wading through a huge swamp of brown fur.

Jason was being carried, and he was struggling like a madman. He slashed madly, but he was getting carried towards the main goal- the bay doors. Nico leaped through the throng of harpies and ran towards Jason. He jumped and stabbed the harpy that was carrying Jason, and he fell free. The bay doors opened, and the harpy skidded onto them and fell into open air.

Nico looked back and saw Leo waving a remote control. "I have remote controls for everything on the ship, except the Archimedes sphere, of course."

After the battle, Nico got the honor of cleaning up the stables. It was easy: just push every single harpy off the boat, through the bay doors and into open air. As they were still travelling overland, Nico felt very sorry to the people who would be enjoying a nice afternoon tea and suddenly have it ruined by raining harpies.

Nico finished, pressed a button and the doors closed.

When he got back on deck, no one was there apart from Leo, who was steering.

He sat down on a chair, looking down at the fields below. A day or two, and they would be in Greece.

As night fell, Jason came up, and seemed surprised to find Nico still on the deck. "You should probably go to sleep, man. It's, like, eleven at night."

"Really? I don't feel too…" Nico promptly dropped off, and the next moment, Jason was shaking him awake. The sky was now brighter, and the clouds were lifting.

A moment later, Nico felt a chill. He felt a dropping feeling in his stomach.

Piper and Hazel climbed on board. Hazel looked a little green.

Piper stormed towards Leo and said, "Leo, would you please steer better? Our poor friend here just got seasick."

She left.

Leo just stood there like nothing had happened. "We just touched water, you see."

Nico immediately felt a chill in his body. It wasn't possible. He didn't have the power to sense stuff in the sea.

All of a sudden, a boat came out of the thin mist. Leo yelled, "What the-?" and then the two boats crashed. Chairs fell over. Tables collapsed. A barrel came rolling towards Nico and sent him flying over the edge.


	6. VI

**VI**

**Nico**

Nico felt weightless as he fell down, down, down from the ship. He could only glimpse a vague shape of the ship before he hit the water.

This was Poseidon's realm, and this water definitely did not like him. When he surfaced, he saw cannons shooting from the side of the ship. Ballistae shot back and forth between the two ships. The mast of the _Argo II_ was snapped.

But that wasn't Nico's only problem.

Around him, the sea erupted and a gigantic serpent surfaced around him. On its head, there was a spray-painted sign that said, _Ethiopian Cetus_.

Okay, it wasn't exactly a serpent. It had the head of a fish but the body looked like one a fish would have, with scales, but the body was very, very long. It roared loudly and it lunged at him. The teeth were red. A whale was in its mouth. Nico tried to swim out of its way, but it swallowed him up.

While in the mouth, Nico rolled out of the reach of the teeth. The Cetus' tongue kept bouncing up and down, rolling him head over heels multiple times. He then was slammed against the top of the mouth and he knew that the Cetus had submerged.

While in the Cetus' mouth, Nico kept trying to regain his balance, but it just wasn't possible as the Cetus kept going up and down and lashing its tongue.

Nico's ears popped. He started to feel woozy, and he almost blacked out. Just as the world was about to go black, the Cetus resurfaced and his body felt much better, like Hades had stopped using him as a footrest.

Nico immediately stabbed his knife into the creature's tongue. The Cetus roared in pain and spit him out, sending Nico sky-high. He fell down towards the water like a stone.

His ankle hurt, but he was fine- apart from the fact that he was falling from the sky at height and at a deadly rate. He'd recently heard that hitting water really was just like hitting concrete if at a high speed.

When he was about to hit the water, the Cetus surfaced just as he landed on it. It yelped a bit, it sank, leaving Nico to try his best to float. The _Argo II_ was nowhere to be seen. He almost gave up hope when, in the distance, he suddenly saw flames. They burned through the mist, and he saw the silhouette of his ship, and the enemy ship, still locked in battle. The _Argo II_ was on fire.

He knew he couldn't swim there in time. He wasn't Percy Jackson.

He then had a brilliant idea, and he waited for what seemed like a long time. Then, a meter away, he saw a bubble. Then two. Then three. Then the water burst and his friend popped back out.

He swam out of the way of the mouth and then climbed onto its neck, slowly climbing his way to the head. The Cetus wasn't submerging, which was good, but it was bound to soon. He reached the head and frantically searched for anything that would help him steer. His hands touched two long strands of hair- probably eyelashes or something- and he pulled.

The Cetus stopped.

He then pulled the right one a little, and the Cetus turned around in he water.

He had tamed a creature of the sea.

He grinned. Poseidon had probably sent this monster, but he had to get to the ship first, and then worry about the sender.

He then flicked both the eyelashes, and the sea monster raced over the water, approaching the battling pair of ships.


	7. VII

**VII**

**Frank**

Frank was having trouble with the enemy.

The other ship was already starting to lower gangplanks and lines. People in ancient Greek armor walked on and started to inspect the crew of the Argo II.

"Εσείς οι άνθρωποι δεν πρέπει να έχουν έρθει εδώ ." One of them said.

"What did they just say?" Frank asked Jason.

"Oh, um- this is ah- bad news. They said that we shouldn't have come here, and they seemed like they meant it."

"Oh, great-"

"Frank, DUCK!"

Jason pushed him away just as one of the men came at him with a sword. Jason then summoned a blast of lightning and shot the man square in the chest. He crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

"Thanks, man." Frank said.

"Don't mention it." Jason said.

Behind the throng of warriors, Frank could just see one man who had a relatively short beard, holding a very long sword who seemed to be giving commands to the warriors.

He looked, actually, quite good, with a beard, bronze chestplate and a lot of hair-which was weird considering the fact that he had to be at least 60,70 years old. His face was covered with wrinkles. Beside him were some more men, each one holding a sword.

The man said in English, "What are you doing here? You demigods need to-"

All of a sudden, he fell to the ground. When he rose, his eyes were glowing red, and his voice was old, raspy- the sound of mother earth.

"You may have evaded my capture for a long time, but it's time for you to die. Warriors, attack."

The Greek warriors all rushed forward, including the bearded man, who Gaea seemed to have trouble controlling. Frank turned into a drakon-never an easy feat- and charged the man. Gaea seemed to be amused. No matter what he tried, Gaea would just keep deflecting them-and Frank was slowly growing tired. He didn't understand. Gaea wasn't exceptionally good with a sword. When had she gotten so good?

Gaea seemed to read his thoughts and said, "You're wondering who this is, aren't you? Well, you may have the privilege of meeting the _original_ Jason and his Argonauts. I've managed to convince them to try to stop you, but of course I've run into a few problems."

Frank was so shocked at three things that Jason's sword almost slashed him. First, it was the fact that Mother Earth was on their ship now, and she had managed to control the original Jason. Second, it was that Gaea sounded so upbeat. She usually wasn't like this. She would dish out threats usually, or maybe the occasional warning or two, but she never sounded so happy. Third, Gaea was _speaking_. She would usually use telepathy to talk to them, but she never talked.

She was getting stronger much faster than before. It had barely been a day after they had left Rome, and she had already upgraded herself to _Extremely Annoying Gaea Ver. 2_. Not a good sign for them. If Gaea would awake in 1 month, her power would really skyrocket. Luckily, with one shot, Frank ripped through the man just as he was about to stab him in the neck.

Whoops. He had just killed Jason- the original Jason.

At least it got the other Greek warriors to leave. The moment Frank sliced through Jason, all the warriors aborted the capture and ran back to their already ravaged ship, courtesy of Leo' exploding cannonballs, screaming like little babies. Leo came over, sweating from trying to repair the ship from cannonballs and punctures, and immediately asked Frank, "Where's Nico?"

"Nico? Umm… I don't know."

All of a sudden a figure came out of the haze on the left of the boat, and what Frank saw was terrifying- a huge serpent-fish thing, which was heading straight towards them.


	8. VIII

**VIII**

**Frank**

Frank could only see the head of the serpent, but he knew they were in trouble. The serpent was really, really long, and looked really, really- annoyed and uncomfortable?

There was no time to waste- unfortunately, the warriors from the other ship seemed to have regained their courage and had once again, lowered the gangplanks. Jason-the original Jason- stepped out, this time eyes normal, but very, very angry. He yelled a war cry and the warriors surged forward.

This time, there really was no hope for them to win, with the serpent-fish thing coming closer towards them. All Frank and his friends could do was fight. He transformed into a lion and started picking the warriors off one by one. This time, Jason stayed at the edge of the battle, behind his warriors, where no one could reach him. The monster swan ever closer, and finally, Frank could see that on it's head, there was a spray-painted sign that said, _Ethiopian Cetus_, and in between its eyes, there was serpent. a grinning boy in a black army jacket who was holding two eyelashes like reins, guiding the Cetus towards the boat.

"Nico!"

Frank would have not expected Nico to do anything apart from swim back to the boat if he had fallen into the sea. And here he was, grinning while holding onto a Cetus, which was what that thing was probably called.

Nico slammed the serpent into the side of the enemy's ship. Literally everything went toppling over- barrels, chairs, maps, swords, armor, even clothes, which came out of the portholes. The warriors didn't even hesitate. They just kept fighting. Frank and his friends were in serious trouble. They had been so distracted by the spectacle that the warriors immediately pushed them into a tight circle. Jason kept firing off lightning bolts down at the warriors, probably using all of his energy with each one, Hazel kept pulling up unlucky jewels from the seabed and throwing them at random warriors, and in about 10 seconds they would explode- one of Leo's inventions. Frank turned into a wasp, stinging the warriors and probably causing them a whole lot of pain. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough- at least until Nico realized that bashing the enemy boat wasn't going to work, and started plucking warriors off the deck, one by one. In about 30 seconds, the warriors took a look in the direction of the Cetus and ran back to their ship. Even the old Jason looked shocked and escaped.

From the head of the Cetus, Nico yelled, "That's what I'm talking about!" And started to bash the enemy ship until it started to turn tail and retreat.

Unfortunately, the Ethiopian Cetus wasn't what the warriors had been scared of. In fact, a couple of moments later, a huge shadow loomed over Nico. Two red, gleaming eyes showed a gigantic serpent. A more classic one, actually, with the body of a snake. It towered, literally, as tall as a skyscraper. It let loose a roar, and Frank swore he heard the port windows of both ships shatter. Jason and Leo put their hands over their ears. The serpent went under and moments later, the escaping ship got tipped over. The screams of the warriors could be heard from even a kilometer away.

The serpent then suddenly popped back out of the water- right underneath Nico's Cetus, which was about the size of the serpent's head. It flicked its head, and Nico and his Cetus were sent flying up.

Nico fell, hard, onto the deck, but the Cetus wasn't so lucky. It fell straight into the jaws of the Serpent.

"No!" Nico yelled. He took out his dagger and charged the gigantic serpent. He leaped onto its back and ran up its spine, impaling his dagger into the flesh as many times as possible. Unfortunately, the serpent didn't seem fazed, if only a little annoyed. It tossed Nico straight up, and this time, it caught him in its gigantic mouth. Nico screamed as he went down the hatch.

"Nico!" Frank yelled.

The serpent noticed the crew of the Argo II, all on deck, and lunged towards them. Before charging towards it, Frank muttered, "I hate you, Keto."


	9. IX

**IX**

**Percy**

Percy waited for the barbs to fly out of the sockets, waited for death. But after what seemed like millennia, nothing happened.

The bird squawked in-was that fear?

Percy heard a squelch and the sound of rock hitting steel. He opened his eyes, only to see the bird get conked on the head by a gargantuan boulder, sending it falling, trapped underneath. Percy breathed a sigh of relief and started to long, tedious climb up. A quarter of the way up, a rock bounced off the wall and nearly hit him, passing inches from his head. Halfway up, he almost fell down, hands red and raw from climbing the wall, cuts and scrapes all over his body from sharp rocks, and there was a large gash in his shirt from an arrow that one of the birds had shot at him. He looked up, and cursed.

A mountain of rocks, each about the size of his fist, occasionally the size of his head, or even bigger, falling down the side of the wall, right on top of him. He braced himself for the impact, but he couldn't fight against the sheer weight of the falling rocks. As rocks bumped on his head, giving him headaches that he thought would last for ever, he slowly lost his grip and soon, he was dangling by one finger off the side of the wall, all his strength gone, weak and trembling.

The rocks just kept on coming.

Just as he was about to lose his grip, the rocks stopped falling…and then he lost his grip on the wall. Surprisingly, he landed on a pile of rocks- probably the ones that had come tumbling down. Then Gaea's voice appeared.

_You have failed utterly, Percy. Your hands are too numb, too hurt to continue climbing, and in a matter of days you will die of thirst and hunger- not long enough for your hands to heal so that you can bear the pain. So, I give you a question: would you like your death to be quick, such as me releasing these rocks, or slow, like starving to death?_

"Neither, Gaea." Percy replied. "I think I'd prefer to go back up to that door. Sorry to disappoint you, but even though my hands hurt and I may not be able to bear the pain, but I will try!"

_You do not choose. Then I will choose for you._

Percy leapt up and grabbed back onto the wall just as the rocks crumbled. His hands were screaming with pain, his body was aching, but he slowly inched his way up the slope. After what seemed like forever, he finally reached the top, but by now the pain was simply unbearable, and after staggering through the door, he fainted.

When he came to, what he saw was just weird.

He had been expecting another cave, or perhaps a familiar place in the USA as an illusion or something (which always seemed to happen), but it was an indoor fire escape. The only weird part was that there was a hole in the ceiling right above Percy.

His hands didn't hurt as much, nor did his feet, so he started walking down the steps.

After walking for some time, he looked back…and saw something that made him want to scream in terror.

Magma, yes, _magma_ was slowly flowing down the steps. It was only inches away from his feet. Just as he was about to run, the magma caught up and burned his shoe.

"OW!"

He could feel the heat even from the inside. It felt like there was a group of pyromaniacs putting their own home-made flamethrowers on his foot and turning them on. He wrenched his foot away and ran.

The lava moved at a surprisingly fast rate, and it melted some of the concrete above him. Magma drops were dripping from the ceiling. Percy ran like he had never run before. He doubted that his water powers would protect him in the lava, so he ran.

The stairs then suddenly had a giant hole in the middle, so he could see on the other side. It was like a square.

Unfortunately, the rails couldn't hold much longer. In fact, pockets of lava were dripping through the holes. Percy knew that if he went any further, he'd probably die.

The room was hot. It was even hotter that having a barbecue in the midday sun in the Arizona desert. Percy was sweating like crazy. He knew that if he descended another level, the magma would get him. There was no choice. He took a deep breath and jumped over the railings.


	10. X

**X**

**Percy**

Percy fell like a stone. He glanced off the sides of the stairs, singed his shirt a little, and in about 10 seconds he crashed into the side of the stairs. He fell back onto the ground.

So much for that tactic.

Percy looked back and was shocked at what was behind him. The magma had caught up to him- even though he was positive it hadn't been there seconds ago.

Magic. That was what was keeping the magma up with him. He ran along the walls, jumping down to the lower levels from the higher ones, and eventually he reached a dead end. The staircase had ended, and globs of magma were dripping down the sides. This was what the giants had probably counted on- him burning to death.

Of course, it wasn't too obvious that there was an exit behind him. But how should he open it? It was as solid as a rock. He couldn't open it, even if he pushed with all his might.

The lava was moving much more slowly now. Whoever was controlling it probably thought that he was a goner, so why not make his death slow?

Percy tried to calm down, but he couldn't. His breaths started to grow shorter. He started to focus on tiny things, like the way the magma was melting the stone that made up the walls. He felt the cold stone behind him.

Hold on…

Percy started to concentrate. He concentrated on the magma spirits, whoever they were, made them obey him, and wouldn't take no for an answer. Beads of sweat started to pop up. He was totally drenched in sweat by the time he had managed to control the magma. With the last of his energy, he waved his arms and al the magma rushed to the door. He made it press against the door, burning off the stone, melting it. He kept at it, and when the door had been melted, he waved his hand and the lava went away.

He ran for it, and found a wooden ladder.

Oh, great. Just great. A wooden ladder that would burn when lava touched it.

He grabbed onto one of the rungs, but it crumbled a little when his hand had touched it. When he tried to support his weight on it, the entire rung disintegrated.

Well, that sucked.

Percy grabbed onto the next rung, and found it relatively solid. He climbed up a few more rungs, but when his hand touched the 7th rung, a storm of arrows suddenly flew from above. Percy dodged them.

So there were booby-trapped rungs- probably inconsistently. There was no way to figure out a pattern- or was there?

He decided to try something out.

GAEA- that would be 7,1,5,1.

He climbed up, avoiding the rung directly above him. 1.

He climbed up another 4 rungs, and then avoided the one directly above him. 5.

He was almost at the top of the ladder. He reached up- and found that he was reaching towards the end. 1. There was no escaping the last trap.

The lava was actually flowing upwards- not very natural. Obviously magic. It would hit him in seconds.

He thought for a while, but couldn't figure it out. How to get past this? He tentatively reached up and grabbed the ledge. Nothing happened, and he crawled out of the hole.

Surprised, but relieved, he stood up and looked around at the room he was in, and was shocked at what he saw.

The biggest collection of poster-size memes he had ever seen. There were things like- _Problem, officer?,_ Or "_Me Gusta."_ Or even _"It's IMPOSSIBRU!" _they were all there. Demigods weren't supposed to use computers, but Annabeth had shown him how Daedalus' computer could deflect monster signals, at least, for an hour at a time, and while at it, she had created a Facebook account, signed in to twitter, searched for pictures of Hercules (they all looked nothing like him), played 5 rounds of Plants VS. Zombies and shown him quite a number of memes.

They were all here. What was going on?

All of a sudden, the room started to swirl a little. "Whoa!" Percy stumbled back and forth, spun in circles, and fell on the floor.

When he came to, he was back in the same room. Same pictures, same placing. Nothing was out of place.

All of a sudden, the pictures in the room started moving. They grew bigger and smaller, and slowly peeled off from their frames. Troll face was especially terrifying. They circled him, laughing evilly, and all with grinning faces.

They forced him into a corner of the room, and started to hit him with their papery bodies. He got numerous paper cuts and bruises. He had red marks all over his body, which ached all over.

_What is going on?_


	11. XI

**XI**

**Annabeth**

Annabeth fell down once again.

The dagger fell down beside her, and she snatched it out of the air.

She glanced off ledges, scraped her body on the wall a couple of times, and then saw a cave- right in the side of the wall. She dropped in- with difficulty- and when she saw that there was no light, she pulled out her dagger, and shone the celestial bronze in front of her.

The cave was big, bigger than anything that she had ever seen. And yes, it was even taller than Olympus' roof. It was dozens of yards long, and the same in every direction.

She walked forward, but the moment she stepped forward, a rumbling sound came from the ceiling.

"What the?..." she asked.

All of a sudden, stalactites fell from the ceiling and came crashing down towards her. She ran.

The stalactites kept raining, and she kept running. The noise was deafening.

They seemed to be falling in straight lines, and she couldn't dodge some. They scraped on her shirt, leaving red marks everywhere.

Finally, the falling ended. She stood up and looked around, and saw a long corridor in front of her, branching out at multiple places. She started to walk.

Before continuing, she unrolled her last spool of string and started to unwind it behind her.

She kept walking in a straight line, turning left and right in turn to make sure she was walking in a straight line. She had only walked a couple of yards when she saw a piece of string on the ground.

A piece of her colorful string.

She shivered. How had the string gotten here? Either she was walking in circles, or someone was toying with her.

She was pretty sure that she had never seen this corridor before, but that was definitely her string. She decided to go the opposite way. She reeled in the string (which took forever) and continued to walk.

The corridor this time seemed like it would never end. She walked and walked and walked, but there were no branches, just one long, long path.

After walking for a good ten minutes or so, Annabeth once again saw her string in front of her.

So someone was trying to trap her.

She gave it another thought and decided to go in that direction. Better to beat up that monster first, she thought.

Surprisingly, though, when she followed the string, she found herself back at the entrance of the cave.

She heard a scraping sound.

When she turned around, the string was gone. The hallway was empty- except for the string that was being pulled further away from her.

Someone pulling it meant that someone was here.

She ran after it- through winding corridors and turns that she had never seen. Several times she almost lost it, but with some luck, she turned a random corner and there it was, still being pulled away. After chasing it for a solid 10 minutes or more, Annabeth was getting a little tired. She ran after it and burst into a huge chamber. There, two red eyes shone out of the dark.

Annabeth swallowed. "Not you again."

"Yes." Arachne hissed. "You have come to the center of the maze, and this time I will play fair. First to kill wins? How about that? That would be fair, wouldn't it?"

"Whatever." Annabeth's mind was racing. How had Arachne gotten here so fast?

Annabeth dashed under Arachne and jabbed her dagger right in a chink n the armor- except that Arachne didn't disintegrate and now, she had lost her only source of light.

Arachne slashed wildly with her claws at lightning speed, landing blow after blow right on her. Annabeth wished she had a sword like Percy's.

Arachne kept striking, over and over again. Her cuts from the fall stung like crazy. She was on the verge of blacking out.

Arachne, however, was having the time of her life, and Annabeth couldn't withstand it any longer. It had all been a trap, she realized. There was no way out of this maze- only either by running out or dying under Arachne's claw-like pincers.

Annabeth blacked out.


	12. XII

**XII**

**Annabeth**

Annabeth woke up in complete darkness. She crawled around, trying to get a feel. The only thing she noticed was that the floor was extremely wet and sticky. She fumbled around for her dagger, but it wasn't there. After a long time groping around in the dark, she felt something that felt a lot like mush. When she picked it up and smelled it, all she smelled was the smell of vomit.

When she tried to get a feel, she realized something horrible.

The mush was actually a caterpillar head- and spiders eat bugs.

Arachne's stomach was awfully dry, though. There were no digestive juices or anything, but the sticky floor was unnerving enough. All she could find in there were bits of half-digested bugs, arachnids (Arachne apparently ate her own soldiers) and the occasional helmet or sword. Unfortunately, any helmets or swords she could find were so digested, that the moment she stabbed them against the lining of the stomach, they disintegrated into a pile of mush.

She realized that her body didn't hurt anymore, even after being scratched by Arachne. Maybe Arachne had healed her before swallowing her whole, just so that she wouldn't taste her blood.

Or maybe…

Annabeth got out her mouth and bit on her hand as hard as possible, until blood started to drip out. The moment the blood touched the stomach, it ignited- and Annabeth saw how much danger she had been in.

Just inches away, a huge pool of digestive juices and- pretty much everything that a huge arachnid eats for breakfast, lunch and dinner. She had been planning to go in that direction.

Annabeth realized that the flame was still burning. The stomach shook, and Annabeth was bounced around, her blood spattering, sending lines of fire racing along the walls. Annabeth almost got her hair seared off. Arachne was running, Annabeth realized- for water.

Annabeth couldn't do anything except for wait- until she realized that she was in the path of some rapidly expanding flames.

She frantically located the exit- luckily enough; it was the only path that was available. She ran into the esophagus and started to crawl.

Obviously Arachne was starting to choke, because the walls, which were slightly red and dimly lit by the fire behind her, were expanding and contracting, like Arachne was trying to swallow her again.

The further up she went, the smaller the esophagus became. At one point Annabeth had to put her head on the sticky floor- not the best feeling in the world. The mucus lined on the esophagus bust into flame once in a while, and Annabeth had to roll over it to stop it burning her. Finally, with numerous burns on her clothes and blood everywhere, Annabeth popped her head out of Arachne's mouth- and fell into a giant pool of water.

Arachne hissed, "So that was what was crawling up my throat. Horribly uncomfortable. You're awfully persistent. Why didn't I chew you up when I had the chance?"

The water bubbled around Annabeth. She only had one thought-_Get out._ And the water exploded around her.

Water Nymphs- girls in green dresses- towered above her, standing on water spouts.

"Child of _Athena,"_ they said, not very politely, "You have insulted us! Putting your disgusting blood into our river. Polluting us! Now, leave!"

Annabeth didn't get the chance. The Nymphs summoned giant jets of water, and blasted Annabeth into the cave ceiling.

Surprisingly, Annabeth fell back into the river.

"_What?_" one of the Nymphs said, "How did you-"

Annabeth looked back, and saw a watery imprint on the cave ceiling 10 meters away. She had landed diagonally.

"The water does not sense you as an enemy now," The Nymphs said. They retreated back into the depths of the river.

Arachne, who had been staring at Annabeth for a while, hissed with annoyance. Her jaw was dangling a little- probably broken from Annabeth's squeeze through.

She sprang at Annabeth, pincers clashing. She kept striking, but Annabeth was too fast. She kept dodging. But this time, she was in a cave, with no exits at all. She needed to kill Arachne- once and for all.

As Arachne advanced, wincing with pain at the fire in her belly. She roared, and Annabeth notched her knife. Praying that her plan would work, she threw the dagger into Arachne's mouth before she could close it.

Immediately, Arachne roared in pain, and stumbled. The dagger had managed to catch fire inside Arachne's belly, and then flown into her intestines. Miniature nuclear explosions seemed to be happening. Red spots were showing up on Arachne's shell, and after a long, agonizing wait, Arachne slumped to the ground, let loose a huge roar, and exploded into dust.

Annabeth picked up her now singed, yet wet and slimy dagger, and washed it off in the river before sliding it into her sheath.

She then headed in the direction she thought Arachne had come from, and found a tiny cave opening. She crawled in and found her backpack. Why Arachne hadn't destroyed them, she didn't know, but she picked them up and started to feel along the walls. Almost immediately, she realized that her hands were wiping dust, and after clearing away all the soot, she pulled her dagger out for the light she needed to read them. The words were:

Το τηε Δοορς οφ Δεατη

To the doors of death. She knocked around and found a piece of huge wood. She pushed it and it fell down, revealing a passageway.

"All right, then," Annabeth said. "Here we go."

She started to walk down the corridor.


	13. XIII

**XIII**

**Nico**

Nico felt around in the dark space that was awfully slimy, gooey and stinky. He couldn't see anything, but he assumed that he was in the serpent's stomach. He fumbled around for his knife, but it gave off so little light that it was useless. He tried to stab the lining, but it was so thick that he couldn't even make a dent. Stygian Iron wasn't as strong as he had hoped.

Nico had other plans. He concentrated on the earth, churning below the sea. He focused on its riches, and the power coming from the dead. He summoned all his strength, but just as he was about to summon a huge wall of dead people to overwhelm the serpent, a bright light shone through the lining and Nico climbed out, relatively unharmed. But his Cetus was nowhere to be found- probably still inside the serpent. As his head popped out of the serpent's hide, he saw Frank- in the form of an elephant, preparing to rip the hide again, but when he saw Nico, he trumpeted with happiness Jason flew overhead, preparing to strike again- which Nico knew would mean disaster for the serpent. He yelled to Jason, "STOP!"

Jason stumbled in the air and looked down at Nico. He yelled back, "WHY?"

Nico pointed to the crack he had just come from and yelled, "CETUS! FRIEND!", which Jason probably didn't understand at all.

But he did, and he stopped, his hands crackling with electricity. A confused look came across his face, and then a look of realization. Jason pulled back, and Nico concentrated once more. His thoughts went into the ground. He found it harder and harder with the water crushing it and Gaea controlling it. Finally, after a full five minutes, his head was covered with beads of sweat, the sea rumbled. The serpent had disappeared beneath the sea, but Nico could sense it on the seabed, and with all his might, he summoned the dead.

The sea parted to the seabed and a huge crack suddenly appeared in the earth, and all the water poured in.

The dead started to climb out of the crack, groaning and muttering from their life. But Nico was alarmed. These dead were not the normal dead that he usually summoned. These ones were full of hate, greed and power. Nico managed to control them, and with all his energy, he made the dead drag the serpent underwater, and with a huge rumble, the crack disappeared. The Cetus was once again enveloped with water, and it swiftly swam to the surface. It surfaced and swam towards Nico.  
Nico ran towards it and immediately jumped on its head, smiling like an idiot. Unfortunately, his new friend didn't seem to appreciate the gesture, and flung Nico into the wheel. Jason immediately stood up, hands crackling. When Nico got up, the steering wheel was a little bent, but still usable.

"Owww…" Nico was disappointed. The Cetus had forgotten him already?

Nico went back into his cabin, dejected, ignoring all the things his friends were asking him. He'd come to like the Cetus, but it had tossed him back.

Just as Nico was about to go down the steps, he felt something touch his shoulder. Expecting it to be Jason, he turned around- and stared into the nostrils of the Cetus.

"Aaagh!" Nico stumbled backwards and fell down the stairs. From between his legs, he could see his Cetus' head dip a little, and he crawled back up the stairs. He patted his Cetus on the head, and it snorted and nuzzled Nico's chin. Nico hadn't been happy since… he couldn't remember being so happy. He smiled and walked out.

Suddenly, Coach Hedge came screaming, running up the stairs. He yelled like a maniac, "Where's the monster? The enemy? The pirate? The two people fighting in a one-on-one cage match with spikes dropping randomly over their heads and impaling them?"

Nico sighed. Coach Hedge's eyes were as big as golf balls, and his entire body was vibrating wildly.

"Coach hedge, would you _please_ stop going nuts with the coffee? The last time you did that, you punched a hole in the hull."

All of a sudden, Coach Hedge's hand started to vibrate really quickly, and he (Surprise Surprise) punched a hole in the hull. Below them, steam came out, and Piper's voice said, "Coach Hedge, I'm taking a bath." Luckily, the steam didn't dissipate, which was good, because if it had Nico would have run away and jumped into the ocean in embarrassment.

Nico sighed. "Jason, would you restrain him again and put him in his cabin?"

Jason sighed. "Sure."

Leo was quick in fixing the hull, and when Piper came up a minute later (with clothes on), she had an angry look on her face. "Were you two peeking?"

Jason and Nico both blushed. "No," they said in unison.

That afternoon, the ship landed in Greece, atop a hill. Nico had given more or less exact locations for the temple, but they found themselves in Athens, on top of a hill overlooking the city.

Nico grumbled and walked up to Leo, who was at the helm. "I thought Festus was accurate with geography."

Leo blushed. "Sorry, man. I typed in the wrong thing. There's a cheese factory in Athens that's called Epirus, and I chose that option. Festus occasionally likes using Google Maps to find stuff, you know."

Nico grumbled. "Great. So we'll have to walk."

He looked back at the harbor, where he saw his Cetus bobbing up and down, uncertainly. "Hey, Leo…" he started. "You wouldn't have a mechanism for shrinking large sea serpents, would you?"

Leo smiled. "Yes, I do. In fact, here it is!"  
He pulled out his Hephaestus sphere and pugged it into a socket somewhere, and powered it up by typing in random things that Nico didn't understand anything about. It looked like Leo was trying to win a competition for pointless speedwriting. Finally, the sphere changed shape into what looked like a ray gun.

"Just press the button, dude." Leo said.

Nico pressed the button, and a huge beam of light shot straight across the city and zapped the Cetus. It grew smaller, and floated in the air towards them. Leo then pressed some more commands, and when the Cetus was the size of a mouse, Leo punched in some more commands, and a bubble floated through the air and enveloped the Cetus. The bubble floated, which was good, and Nico guided the Cetus to him. He patted its head.

"Ready?" Leo asked. Without waiting for an answer, he punched a button on the control panel and gangplanks lowered.

Leo grinned. "Welcome to Greece, man."


	14. XIV

**XIV**

**Nico**

Athens wasn't that spectacular.

There were monuments everywhere, yes, but almost no one was on the streets.

Coach Hedge grunted. "The debt crisis thingy that's happening in Greece. Everyone's probably rioting."

"Coach?" Nico asked.

"Yeah?"

"How did you know all that?"

Coach Hedge snorted. "I don't _just _watch cage matches and Kung Fu movies, you know, although lately I just got into the _Kung Fu Panda_ franchise. You should watch it too!"

Nico shrugged. Movies wouldn't matter if he couldn't save the world. He'd heard of Kung Fu Panda before, but he couldn't imagine watching it now.

Coach Hedge kicked marble statues all the way to the edge of the city, where a huge mob was gathering. The group scooted around them and found themselves at the edge of the woods. They then started their trek.

"Why couldn't we take the highway or something?" Nico grumbled as they trudged along. His Cetus floated behind him, and made useless attempts to cheer him up as he walked. After six hours' worth of walking, they had made quite a lot of progress. Nico pulled out map and pointed out that they had covered halfway already. Coach Hedge halted the group and yelled, "Everyone, dinnertime!" and pulled out two tents from his bag. "One for the boys, one for the girls. Fix 'em up while I'm cooking!"

And he started to cook.

Everyone puzzled over the tents, until Leo cheated. He took out his Archimedes sphere and typed in a command. It absorbed the assorted mess of picks, flaps and steel tubes and spit them all out, perfectly shaped.

They were about to do the girls' tent when Coach Hedge yelled, "Don't do that anymore! You've got to learn survival skills! Carry on _without _the sphere, or I'll make you start both tents over from scratch!"

Finally, after a long time fiddling around, Leo fixed up the tents one last time and they were set.

Coach Hedge yelled, "Dinnertime!"

The sun was already setting as they sat around a fire, eating canned soup. "Coach, why did it take you this long to cook soup?" Nico asked.

Coach Hedge didn't answer, and Nico thought it was best that he dropped the subject.

The tents weren't any better. With Coach Hedge sleeping in a tree on "Guard Duty" to make sure they weren't out after curfew, the boys' tent wasn't very clogged, but there were no sleeping bags or blankets, so the boys slept on the ground. Nico had to smell Jason's feet all night long, and they didn't smell good.

The next morning, Nico woke up with an aching back. He sat up, and went outside to get his shoes. Coach Hedge was up too, and the sky was still a little grey, not completely bright yet. Nico walked over to Coach Hedge, and started to eat his breakfast- ABC soup. Coach Hedge sympathetically patted Nico's shoulder. "Couldn't sleep because of somebody's feet?"

Nico grumbled a bit, but didn't object.

"Well, sorry, but I had to keep you guys safe. I was up all night." Nico realized that Coach Hedge had bags under his eyes. "In a place like this, monsters would be pretty common."

When the others started to wake up, Coach Hedge went back to his tree and slept while everybody packed up. By midday, they had broken camp and were trudging through the woods when Nico noticed some statues in the middle of a clearing, with a road leading to them from some cliffs high above. Nico was so exhausted that he slumped onto one of the statues, which was an Egyptian sphinx. After a couple of seconds, Frank screamed and pointed at his statue.

It was _moving_.


	15. XV

**XV**

**Frank**

Frank screamed. The statue Nico was sitting on was _moving_.

"Automatons?" Leo yelled. "These sphinxes don't look like automatons at all!" He summoned a blast of fire, but Nico's sphinx deflected it off its… skin? Hide? Stone body? Frank didn't quite know what to call it.

Frank transformed into a grizzly bear. He felt his arms grow thicker, his fingernails sharper, and his weight heavier (As if he wasn't heavy enough). He slammed into the sphinx and it broke into stone slabs. But the problem was that there were stone sphinxes everywhere and they could come to life too. In fact, the sphinx they had just blasted to smithereens had a tiny ball of blue light inside it, which floated off into the air, in the direction of the road.

Frank accidentally touched another pedestal, and another sphinx roared to life, slashing him across the cheek. Frank roared back and tried to slam it, but it blocked him and punched him backwards. Jason ran over and summoned a giant bolt that made Frank's hair shoot straight up, and shot it directly at the sphinx- but when it got to 5 meters close, a barrier of energy seemed to form and the bolt deflected off the barrier, into the ground.

Hazel kept throwing rubies at the sphinx, just to see if her unluckiness counted for non- living organisms, but the truth was… they didn't. Leo summoned fire, but the sphinx didn't seem fazed.

The sphinx knocked Leo sky high. He flew into some trees. Hazel wasn't so lucky, though. She was knocked into a huge rock, and she got a cut on her wrist.

Frank yelled. "NO!" he ran towards her, but a paw swiped him from behind and he collapsed on the ground. He was bleeding from the sphinx's claws, and his body ached all over. Jason was striking blow after blow, but it didn't seem to affect the sphinx. Piper was cowering behind a stone slab. Her charmspeak wouldn't work in a situation like this. In fact, Nico was the only one who was making a significant difference. He summoned cracks from the ground, and skeletons crawled out, smelling of mildew and death. They stormed the sphinx, but after a couple of seconds, the skeletons would be thrown off the sphinx, and Nico would have to summon some more to make up for it.

Frank got back up to his paws, and this time used all his effort to transform into a drakon. He felt tired, but he pushed on. He slammed his tail into the sphinx and it flew backwards into a bush. He slithered towards the sphinx, preparing to strike once more, but the sphinx turned around and swiped at him. The sphinx's paw was small, but it dealt a lot of force. He was swung up, and when he landed, he transformed back into Frank again. Unfortunately, the sphinx wasn't done. When he got back up, the sphinx swiped a paw at him, and he flew into the side of a tree. He blacked out.

When he came to, Jason and Nico were still facing the sphinx, and it wasn't going well. Jason struck the monster over and over with lightning bolts, but he couldn't do any damage. Nico kept sending out skeletons, but he was getting weaker. He was sending out fewer each time, and after a short period of time, the sphinx raised a paw and slashed Nico across the chest. Blood welled out as he slammed into a huge tree.

Jason couldn't win it. Frank knew that, and Jason seemed to know it, as soon as the sphinx leaped across at him and pinned him under one paw.


	16. XVI

**XVI**

**Frank**

Frank screamed at the top of his lungs, but he was too far away to do anything. There would only be one way.

He concentrated until beads of sweat popped up from his face. He used up all his energy, and after only seconds of intense concentration, he finally used all his energy to change himself into another form. He felt himself growing smaller… wait, smaller?

He opened his eyes and groaned.

He was a mouse.

"Oh, come on!" he muttered. But he'd have to make do. He scurried over to the sphinx and launched himself into the sphinx's nose. It looked startled, and reared up. Jason had the brains to roll away, but the sphinx looked quite angry. It started to run around, trampling things, and Frank knew that right now, being a human or demigod would be equally dangerous. He ran back into the bushes, his fur sweaty, panting. He had wasted all of his energy transforming, and now he had to turn back. He concentrated, but after a long time he couldn't transform. He felt panic rise in his chest, but no matter how hard he tried, he wouldn't turn back into a human. He had no choice but to sit there and watch as the sphinx rampaged and as Jason slowly crawled away. Unfortunately, the sphinx noticed him. It roared in anger and ran towards him.

All of a sudden, a large yell came from the woods.

A millisecond later, Coach Hedge came storming out of the woods, screaming "DIE!"

Naturally, the sphinx did not oblige, but in a millisecond it probably was wishing it had. Coach Hedge pummeled it with his hooves, dished out some Kung Fu that Frank _really _wished he could do, slammed it across the face with his club and topped it all off with a mega Karate chop that made the sphinx crumble into a million pieces. Coach Hedge stepped back from the wreckage, only with a few cuts here and there, and laughed like a maniac.

"Hahaha! Coach Hedge has saved the day!" he yelled, and started dancing. Jason the, "Don't touch the STATUES!"

Unfortunately, Coach Hedge had already touched 10 of them in his victory dance when Jason yelled "Statues", and ten statues roared to life. Shame, considering that there were eight of them, but ten sphinxes. Seven of the eight people were totally useless, and the only person who was actually able to fight was Coach Hedge, a psychopathic goat-man who like doing victory dances that got them killed while smashing the heck out of those sphinxes.

"Whoops." Coach Hedge muttered, and yelled, "BRING IT ON!"

He shouldn't have said that. Ten highly dangerous sphinxes leaped out at him and tried to scratch him, but Coach Hedge was fast. He leaped over one, smashing it to smithereens, but another one knocked him to the ground. He skidded for a long way and hit his head on a tree. He fainted.

As Frank watched from the bottom of the bush as a mouse, he felt power coursing through him again. He concentrated, and transformed into a grizzly. He ran towards the sphinxes and head butted one of them. The sphinx was totally stunned as he crashed through it, but another sphinx swiped him and he flew directly into another statue.

Whoops.

The sphinx came to life, and swiped him once. Frank felt his power fading, and he transformed into the less heavy, useless him.

Frank rolled out of the way as the sphinxes swiped the areas where he had been only milliseconds ago, and got to his feet, only to get dragged back by a huge paw. Jason got knocked back by a paw, and he flew into some more sphinxes, which roared to life and batted him around. Frank knew they couldn't win this.

A huge shadow loomed over him, and he rolled out of the way. A sphinx crashed into another sphinx statue, and the two statues got smashed. But Frank had accidentally touched another statue, which came to life.

"Oh, come on!" he yelled. He was about to use all his energy to transform into a grizzly bear again when he saw something startling.

A group of people- two boys , two girls, one of which had streaks in her hair, and an adult with cornrows and a black coat and hat. They were walking down the slope at a leisurely pace. They were probably mortals, but Frank's impression of them changed when they looked down at the valley, and clearly saw them fighting some sphinxes. The color-streaked girl had a look of shock on her face, and she reached her hand into nothing-like her hand had suddenly disappeared- and pulled out a staff. She said two words that Frank knew would frighten him for ages to come.

"_HA-DI!_"

And the sphinxes exploded.


	17. XVII

**XVII**

**Sadie**

Well, hullo. Sadie here.

I'm not in quite a good mood now, considering that our "Trustworthy" transcriber, Mr. Rick Riordan, has been writing books for Greek demigods.

But more on that later.

I'm sure that the question everyone's asking right now is, Why in the name of Ra were we in the second Nome?

Well, it's pretty clear how annoying fruit bats are. We'd been asked to get to Greece soon, and we'd stocked up on supplies-my staff and wand were in the Duat, so we'd had that covered. When we reached the Headquarters of the second Nome, we'd realized why the magicians had called us here.

They'd had an epidemic of juvenile fruit bats who did not know how to fly. The moment we stepped on to campus, we saw a lawn covered in fruit bats that were completely still. The head of the first Nome, an old, balding man called Yelleah, told us that they'd been having swarms of fruit bats every hour for the past week, where the fruit bats on the lawn would attempt to fly and start dropping on peoples' heads, on the roof, in kettles, and pretty much everywhere else. I'd called uncle Amos, Walt and Zia, and we'd spent the whole afternoon picking up bats and transporting them to the Duat. Every one hour, the bats would decide to rebel and we would have to work through that. After four hours of non-stop work, we finally pushed the last bat into the Duat. My entire shirt was covered with bat droppings.

"Well, _that_ was really annoying." I said.

Nobody objected.

We then walked down the hill to our sphinxes, where we wee going to use my magic to open up a portal. Unfortunately, when we got there, we saw our sphinxes beating up some unsuspecting "mortals". Even worse, the mortals were taking a beating. They had awakened a couple of the sphinxes and the sphinxes had started to try and kill them. Which brings us back to the sphinxes.

"HA-DI!" I yelled, and all the sphinxes had exploded. Dozens of blue orbs floated towards the headquarters and probably to Yelleah. I realized that these were not mortals. I mean, what sort of mortal flies, shoots lightning and summons dead people? I knew that these people weren't Egyptians, because we'd never heard of them. Yelleah would have told us about them.

I ran down the slope and asked them, "Who in the world are you?". They didn't say much but looked at each other like they were having a silent conversation.

There was a boy with close-cropped blond hair, still flying, his hands crackling with electricity and with an angry look on his face. Beside him was a girl with long, dark hair, holding a dagger. When I looked into the dagger, I saw an image of Walt crumpling to the ground, and then a cave collapsing. I shuddered, but that blade was probably magic. I mean, we weren't in a cave, and Walt definitely was _not_ crumpling to the ground, as far as I could tell.

Behind them was a pretty horizontally challenged boy, who was just standing there doing pretty much nothing. Beside him, a girl with darkish skin was patting his back, whispering to him some words that I didn't quite catch. But something I did see was that a diamond popped out of the ground after she had stood there for a while.

In front of me was a boy about my age. His skin was really pale, he wore an army jacket and had a dagger in his hand. Beside him was a scrawny boy who was holding a bottle of gasoline, his hand on fire, but he didn't seem to care. If this guy _was_ a magician, he was probably a fire elementalist, and the floating blond boy was probably an air elementalist, but the other people sure didn't look like Egyptians.

They looked at each other once again, and put their hands behind their backs, not saying anything. At that moment, Carter, Zia, Walt and Amos ran down the mountain. Carter asked me, "What are these people doing here?"

What can a girl in this situation do apart from shrug her shoulders?

Carter groaned. "Sadie, I thought you had… what was it that Zia said you had? Oh, right-diplomatic skill."

I replied, "Well-"

But before I could finish, Carter whirled towards the group. He pulled out his sword, and yelled, "SO, WHO ARE YOU?"

The group (obviously) didn't answer, and Carter got a really angry look on his face. He started to mutter a spell-one that would probably kill the entire group. I glanced at them hopelessly, and said, "Well-"

Carter finished reciting his spell and summoned a hieroglyph in front of him. He yelled, "FIST OF HORUS!" and unleashed the Fist of Horus directly at the group.

What happened next was equally surprising.

The blond-haired guy raised his hand and summoned a huge lightning bolt that raised every single hair on my skin. It coursed down through the sky, and it zapped the Fist of Horus and the hieroglyph disappeared.

Carter was stunned, but not as stunned as when the scrawny guy with fire in his hands saw Zia. His eyes widened, and he began to tuck in his shirts.

Uh-oh.

Carter saw him and summoned another Fist, but just as he was about to do it, Yelleah came running down the hill. He yelled, "STOP!"

Everyone stopped.

As he approached us, he opened up his hands and held out four floating orbs, and said, "Here, Look."

As I touched the orb, I was transported into the world of the

Sphinx. I was waiting on a pedestal, waiting for my masters to come, when a group of kids came into the clearing. One of them- I recognized the pale boy- sat on my pedestal, and I felt a jolt of anger course through me.

_Rival Magic_.

I roared in anger at these violators of our code, and leaped at him. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of them (that was the horizontally challenged one) _transform into a bear_, and he leaped at me, shattering me into a million pieces.

I opened my eyes again.

_Rival Magic_. What could that mean? My head was whirling as Carter, Zia and Walt came out from their visions.

"Who _are_ these people?" I asked Yelleah. He shrugged his shoulders, and said, "I don't know, but be careful. If they are a threat, they will prove themselves. If not… I do not know."

He walked back up the slope. Carter didn't react, but someone else did.

Suddenly, a man ran out from the trees. He yelled, "Where's the sphinxes? I'm going to KILL them!"

He ran around, and that was when I noticed that he wasn't a human because he wasn't wearing any pants. In fact, his entire lower body was plain old goat legs.

Walt whimpered. "Who is _that_?" I couldn't answer.

Then the goat-man stopped and stared at us, and his face of anger got an extra layer of disbelief on them. The blond guy started, "Coach Hedge-"

The goat man, who we now knew as Coach Hedge, stormed over to Uncle Amos, and sniffed him. He then reared back in disbelief, and said angrily, "YOU?"

Uncle Amos seemed almost confused for a second, but instantly got a look of disbelief when he seemed to realize what "Coach Hedge" was talking about. "You?"

Coach Hedge and Uncle Amos had a staring contest, and apparently it had been a tie, because Uncle Amos sighed in annoyance. He said to Coach Hedge, "Who's going to tell them?"

Hedge replied, "You of course."

Amos sighed in resignation, and finally let Coach Hedge speak first.

Carter finally asked, "Amos, who _are _these people?"

Coach Hedge said to the other group, "Well, you see, these guys are Egyptians…" he said, and waited for Amos to continue.

Amos finally sighed in annoyance. "And these guys…"

"Well, what are they?" Carter asked.

"…Greeks." Amos finished, sighing.


	18. XVIII

**XVIII**

**Sadie**

Suddenly, the horizontally challenged guy (I'm being nice to him) broke in. "Hey, don't forget that we're Romans."

I suddenly felt like someone had punched me in the gut. These people were descended from the various rulers of Rome and Greece? I thought that was doubtful, but then again, you wouldn't think Carter and I were descended from Narmer and Ramses, would you?

I started, "So…"

Then Coach Hedge had to interrupt. He yelled, "We conquered you idiotic ancient people! BEAT THAT!"

Carter got _really _angry. He was an Egyptian magician, after all. He was probably really proud of his country. He summoned another Fist of Horus and prepared to strike.

Amos yelled, "STOP!" His voice was magically enhanced, and everyone stopped, even Coach Hedge, who stood there, shocked. Coach Hedge finally said, "So… you're Egyptians. And not only that…" he sniffed our clothes. "You don't seem to have any godly smells on you… except for this guy." He pointed at Walt.

I then said, "So… how are you 'Greeks'?" I put up finger quotes. "Are you descended from Pericles, or…"

Coach Hedge snorted. "These guys are even more powerful than you, then, especially if you're descended from Pharaohs, if what you're saying is based on your reality!" he puffed out his chest, and continued, "These guys are _immediate descendants_ of the gods. Jason," he pointed to the blond guy. "Son of Jupiter. _Not _Zeus, mind you, which in my opinion is a much better god, considering I'm Greek, but whatever! Piper," he pointed to the girl with the creepy dagger. "Daughter of Aphrodite."

I raised up my hand. "Um…I saw some weird pictures in that dagger she's holding."

Piper looked shocked, and asked me, anxious, "So…what did you see? It usually shows the future,"

"Well… I saw my boyfriend, Walt, crumpling to the ground," I said, pointing to Walt, "And a huge cave collapsing."

Piper now looked worried. "Walt crumpling to the ground? That's not good-" But Walt interrupted. "Just forget it. I've been close to death before. Why wouldn't I survive that, huh?"

I shuddered. I really didn't need any more recalled images of Walt crumpling to the ground, or him opening his eyes and me yelling at him.

Coach Hedge pointed at the scrawny boy with the fire powers. "This is Leo. He's got super fire powers and all, and he's son of Hephaestus. In my opinion, having a good solid bat would help, but it doesn't matter. Yeah, and this is Frank, son of Mars, descendant of Periclymenus, blah blah blah, and he has shape-shifting powers. Hey, show them your weasel form, Frank, just to prove your point." He said to the slightly horizontally challenged guy who we now knew as Frank.

He sighed, but did it anyway. His nose elongated and his skin grew fur, his body shrink and in a matter of seconds, standing before me was a weasel.

He changed back.

"This is Hazel, daughter of Pluto," he said, pointing to the girl with brown skin and frizzy hair. "She's got super jewelry powers and all-"

He was interrupted by Hazel, who yelled to Carter in a voice that sounded really scared, "DON'T TOUCH THAT!"

Carter had bent down to pick up a piece of crystal about the size of a MacBook Pro. Hazel said, "Please don't touch it. The last time someone did that, they got killed by a randomly thrown bomb."

It sounded far-fetched, but I knew she wasn't lying.  
"Okay… so Hazel can basically make precious stones appear out of the ground at will, as long as there are precious stones there. And we have Nico!" he said, pointing to the scrawny boy.

[A side note: it's quite disorienting when a psychotic, over-caffeinated, battle hungry goat-man introduces you to people who could potentially kill you.]

"Nico's got supreme death powers, guys! My favorite! One lift of his hand and dead people crawl out of crack and stuff, killing everything in their way. It's brilliant!"

[Second side note: Make sure that psychotic, over-caffeinated, battle hungry goat-man does not like death before talking to him.]

I said, "So… I don't suppose you're here for a holiday, because you sure don't like you're from Greece.

"We're here to close the Doors of Death." Jason said, like it was as easy as eating cake.

"I remember." Amos said. "The Doors of Death were Thanatos' fast route between life and death. So… they've been opened?"

"Yep," Jason replied. "And they're being guarded by giants."

"Giants?" Amos asked. "I don't assume they have snake feet and hair."

I thought Amos had lost his mind, but Jason nodded. "Yup, those."

"That means…" Amos shook his head. "Not her?"

"Yes, her." Jason said.

"Enough with the 'her's, please, and could you just tell us who she actually is?" I asked.

"Gaia." Jason said it like she was the most evil thing ever.

"Gaia?" Carter scratched his head. "Isn't she supposed to have, like birds in her hair and arms, and rabbits doing her laundry?"

Piper sighed. "That's Snow White."

"Oh."

"She's the most powerful Greek god ever, and she's going to wake in one month.

One month?

"How do we stop her?" Carter asked.

Jason shrugged. "The myths just say she fell asleep again after all the giants were defeated. But we're here to close the doors of Death, which she opened with her forces. We're going to close them first, so that Thanatos can reclaim them. That way, Gaia's monsters will not be able to escape from the underworld any quicker than they're supposed to."

"So… You're heading there right now?" I asked.

"Yeah. There are two sides to them: in Tartarus- a huge bottomless pit in the underworld, and in the mortal world, they're in an underground temple in Epirus." Nico said.

"Epirus Cheese?" Carter asked.

"No, Epirus, Greece. It's a place from the ancient times."

"And so…I suppose we're going to help you. It's not like Freak can just hear a whistle from halfway across the world, let alone come to Greece, and our portal's been destroyed." I said.

"No." Amos shook his head. "That would be a _really _bad idea."

I stared at him defiantly.

"Fine." He relented. "Just be careful."

Nico pointed us the correct way, and we set off.

After a whole day of walking and sharing our various stories, we found a small cavern in the side of a hill.

"Behold," Nico said. "The House of Hades."

For the House, it didn't look quite grand. The first part was getting in.

"I don't think there's anything here." Carter said.

"No." Nico said. "This cave has secrets only children of Hades or Pluto can reveal."

He put his hand on the far wall of the cave, and a huge door appeared.

They walked in.

For a Temple of the god of Death, it didn't look very death-like.

There were huge rock spires jutting from the ground to the ceiling, which did look horrible, considering that the cave was over 50 feet tall, but there were stuffed toys all piled around the walls.

"Something tells me this isn't a coincidence." Hazel said.

"Why?" I asked.

They explained to me about Octavian, and why everyone thought he was extremely annoying.

"Not the type of person you'd want to have a good breakfast with." I commented.

"And one who you'd not want to have play with little children." Hazel added.

"Yes," I said. "And that too."

Nobody knew how Octavian could have managed to get here, but our suspicions were only raised when we saw an inscription on the ground.

_Your Camp is Doomed._

_Sincerely,_

_Octavian._

"Why would he write something like that?" Hazel wondered.

"I don't know. Maybe he just wanted to scare us a little." I said.

"Who cares? Octavian's an annoying man, so we ignore his words, don't we?" Jason said.

"Yeah, but how did he get here?" I asked. "I thought coming here wasn't allowed, and if he did, he would be branded as a traitor. So why did he come here?"

Everybody looked at one another, and shrugged their shoulders.

"Well, now that we're in the House of Hades, what's next?" Carter asked.

"We get to the doors." Nico said.

But as we started to walk to the other side of the room (which Nico had said was the right way) a voice above us growled, "I don't think so."


	19. XIX

**XIX**

**Carter**

Hello, there. Carter here.

Well, everybody's been wondering what that voice was. Well, here's your answer.

A giant crashed down from the ceiling.

Could you say giant? I don't think his description matches the usual descriptions.

He was bald, and had a couple of dents in his face. His hands were a little twisted, and looked quite weak. His feet were snakes. Literally. The two snakes that were his feet hissed at us and slithered, probably of their own free will. He was holding a huge mace, along with a club.

Sadie took a step back at the sight of the horribly deformed giant that was standing in front of us.

"Hello." His voice was slightly scratchy and hoarse. "I am Thoon."

"Who?" I asked Jason.

"I don't know either. There's a 90% chance that he's a Greek giant, though."

"Wow, thanks for the update." I said sarcastically.

"I will kill you, you foul Greek and Roman demigods!" he yelled loudly.

"Well, that was obvious." I said.

Thoon swung his mace and advanced.

Everyone scattered, but Thoon saw Walt. His eyes opened as wide as inflatable beach balls (he was almost 25 feet tall) and opened his mouth in a silent exclamation. He swung his mace-in fear?- and hit Walt square on the chest.

Sadie yelled, "No!" and summoned her favorite spell.

"_HA-DI!"_

A hieroglyph flared in the giant's face and exploded. He stumbled back, but almost immediately seemed to get better. The dents in his face seemed to have gotten a little deeper, but he was unharmed- more or less. In fact, he only seemed a little annoyed.

But Sadie had already run to Walt, oblivious to Thoon's easy recovery. Thoon rumbled towards Sadie I was too far away to help. I yelled, "Sadie, LOOK OUT!"

Sadie turned her head around and saw Thoon. Her eyes opened wide, and before she could react, he swung his mace again and knocked Sadie halfway across the room, into the ceiling. She fainted as well.

To tell you the ugly truth, I got really angry with the giant.

[Yes, Sadie, I _do_ care about you. Don't act so surprised.]

I felt a spell building up in me-the exact same one I had been planning to use on Jason. I guess even after a day, I was still charging it unknowingly.

I started to feel a power coursing through my hand. I raised my fist, and a symbol shimmered in the air-the symbol of Horus' Fist.

I pushed my hand in a punching movement, but the Hieroglyph slammed into Thoon. I felt his head on my fist, and I put so much force into it that I slammed him into the ground.

I ran to the unconscious Sadie. I looked back, expecting the giant to be still down, but he was already standing up. I looked at him, shocked. There was no way he could have survived that. I'd used much less power with other demons, and even they'd not survived. I felt my pretty huge magic reservoir draining. In fact, I had almost no power left. Honestly, the best I could do was to transform into a falcon, and even _that_ would leave my reservoir almost completely empty. I basically felt like I had bench-pressed a hundred pounds. I mean, I was tired, but anything that was threatening would still have been a threat. I really didn't want the giant to know that I was low on magic.

Sadie was having trouble breathing. Her breaths were becoming more shallow and more forced, and her face was pale.

I admit it. I changed from the composed leader to being crazy. I fired numerous Fists of Horus, but they didn't seem to affect him much. Jason was flying around, zapping the giant, and while it had dented his features quite a bit, it hadn't really done any damage to him. He swatted Jason out of the air, and he crashed onto me.

"Ow!" I groaned and pulled myself up. Jason did the same. Every bone in my body ached, and I knew there wasn't really anything that we could do to defeat the giant and get to the Doors of Death. Piper was trying her best to confuse the giant while Nico summoned the dead multiple times. Her voice was so compelling that I started to turn around and do the monkey dance.

"Stop it." Jason held my shoulder. "That's Piper's Charmspeak. Try not to get attracted."

"Sorry." My face turned red. We both readied our swords and charged the giant.

I slashed the giant's leg with my _Khopesh_ multiple times. He looked quite annoyed, but didn't really seem fazed. Why wasn't he getting damaged? Then I realized that Jason and Nico weren't actually using their full strength to attack him. Why?! We weren't getting far, but the giant was just standing in the middle of the cave, only moving to stop us from getting any further progress. I knew we could defeat him, albeit slowly, but we could.

Or so I thought.

As Thoon swung his mace, he smashed a huge stalactite and sent it crashing to the ground. Everyone ran.

I found myself cowering behind a pillar, along with an unconscious Walt. Jason gritted his teeth. "We won't be able to get anywhere without godly help."

I suddenly felt shocked. "Wait- what?"

"You could only defeat a giant if you worked together with a god- and gods aren't allowed to come to Greece. So…we're pretty much dead." He said.

After the initial shock, I realized something. We could defeat the giant- but we needed to heal Walt!

Just as I was about to tell Jason, Thoon spotted us. His eyes blazed with anger, and swung his mace. Jason was deep in thought, and barely noticed as the mace came swishing down-until it was directly beside him. I had the sense to duck, but I was already too shell-shocked to think clearly. Thoon's mace made contact, and Jason flew halfway across the cavern.

I yelled out, "NO!" but it was too late. Jason smashed against the cavern ceiling and crashed down onto the ground.


	20. XX

**XX**

**Carter**

Piper screamed so loudly I thought my ears would fall off. Zia lobbed a fireball down the giant's throat as he was gloating, but although it did push him back a little, it didn't seem to faze him. I was about to yell, "STOP ATTACKING!" when Zia summoned the pillar of fire I had seen her use back when we were fighting Desjardins on the ship, and he had called on Sekhmet.

Zia fainted, probably from overexertion. The pillar of fire kept following the giant everywhere, and he kept running away from it. I yelled to the few conscious people left- Nico, Piper, Hazel, Frank, Leo and Coach Hedge (Nico's serpent was in its water sphere)-and they gathered around me.

"We have to get Walt fixed up first." I said. "We need him to defeat Thoon!"

Everybody just stared at me. The only thing that we could hear was the giant's rumbling while he searched for us. After a long silence, Frank finally asked me, "Why?" I

"Because he's hosting Anubis." I said.

"WHAT?" Coach Hedge yelled. His yell was so loud that everyone covered their eardrums. "YOU MEAN-"

"Quiet _down_, please! You're bursting my eardrums!" Frank protested.

"Yep." I said. Frank and Hedge both looked at me, and said in unison, "Who's side are you on?"

"No- I'm talking about the way to defeat Thoon!" I said. "Walt's hosting Anubis, an Egyptian god. Do you think that would count-"

"You," Coach Hedge said, "Are a genius."

"Thank you, thank you." I said.

The others stared at each other. Frank asked me, "What do you-"

"Oh, Anubis is an Egyptian god," I said. "I think I said that already. Plus, he's inside Walt's mind, which is part of a human hosting a god, and they can communicate with each other telepathically, and Walt has Anubis powers."

Everyone just stared at me.

Nico said, "_WHAT?_"

"Yeah- that's one of the perks of being blood of the Pharaohs." I said.

"Oh."

"I hosted Horus once," I added. "And Sadie hosted Isis."

"Iris?" Frank asked. "Like, the messenger god? The one who eats ROFL made, organic, lactose free cupcakes?"

"Umm… no. The goddess of magic. Horus is the god of war." I rolled my eyes.

Everyone looked like their brains were about to fry, but Coach Hedge nodded. "Any god of war is a friend of mine, so let's do it!"

"Good," I said, relieved that the first major problem had been solved-the willingness of the others to carry out the plan. "Piper and Hazel, you two try to get Walt back up. Hedge, Nico, Leo and I will go distract the giant while you're at it."

I sneaked out from behind the stalactite we were hiding behind and yelled, "HEY! OVER HERE!" to Thoon.

He saw us, opened his eyes wide open, and swung his mace.

My instincts kicked in. "Scatter!" I yelled, and I ran in one direction. The others ran in the other one. Thoon was stupid enough to go lumbering behind the others, who would clearly have the upper hand. I snuck back to Piper and Hazel, who were trying to awaken Walt, but to no avail. Piper was trying to use her charmspeak, and Hazel was putting a pack on her head (where she had found it, I didn't want to know). I peeked my head out and called, "Coach Hedge!"

Hedge came over and got a bottle of Gatorade from his pocket. Where that bottle had been, I didn't know-but it was dented in more than just one place. He popped open the cap and poured some of it into Walt's mouth. Unfortunately, his aim wasn't that good, and Walt ended up having some orange liquid all over his face.

"Whoops." He said.

As I tried to wipe most of it off, Hedge went back to attracting Thoon. Piper continued on her charmspeak. Walt stirred.

Suddenly, Thoon noticed us. His eyes widened, and he lumbered towards Walt. "Uh-oh." I said, and ran towards him.

Unsurprisingly, he didn't even bother about me. He was too intent on not letting Walt heal, I tripped him with my sword a little too easily. He fell down, his head crushing the rock that concealed Walt. His snake hair narrowly missed Walt's shoes. Any close, and he would have crushed Walt.

Piper continued on her charmspeak as Thoon got back up and ran towards them. I knew tripping him wasn't an option now, knowing that he would crush Walt, but at the same time, I had to.

While I was busy thinking, Hedge and the others solved my problem. They ran from either side of the giant, and swung their blades (Coach Hedge with his baseball bat) from _behind_ the giant's legs. Physics meant that Thoon fell backwards instead of forwards, and once again, the giant fell down, crushing a few rocks in the process.

Meanwhile, Piper and Hazel were almost done with awakening Walt, and his eyelids were almost completely open. He still probably felt a little snoozy. Thoon used the handle of his mace to bat us all out of the way, and charged towards Piper and Hazel.

"No." I said. "No, no, no!"

From the tiny rocky crevice that Thoon had bashed me into, the scene in front of me almost seemed like a movie. Just when Thoon was about to hit Walt with his mace, Piper yelled with one, loud scream, "AWAKEN!". Thoon's mace was about 3 inches away from Piper's face when Walt's hand stretched out as fast as lightning, and he touched the mace. It turned to dust and came down to the floor in a million tiny metal bits.

Thoon's eyes widened. He called us a few choice names, and ran in the opposite direction. Suddenly Walt started to glow a little, and when it faded, Anubis was beside him.

I think I'd probably know what girls would be like if they saw Anubis, and my guess was correct. Piper and Hazel both opened and closed their mouths like goldfishes, unable to speak anything in the presence of the "Hot Boy God". Jason got a little gleam of jealousy in his eyes.

Sadie, who had just began to stir, said, "Anubis!" and she immediately sat up straight.

Piper piped up (Good joke there), "Buh… Buh… Aren't you… a guh… God?"

Anubis didn't even look at her, but did say, "Yes."

He looked at Sadie, and nodded his head. Suddenly, Sadie's face turned red.

[Yeah, great job looking cool and composed, Sadie.]

Anubis ran over to the giant along with Walt, and touched his face. Walt did the same, and he crumbled into dust. Thoon slowly dissolved, and stared at us. "You really think you can simply close the Doors of Death?" he spat out. "Think again! We will destroy the gods by their roots! Our plan is almost complete, and Gaia will awaken in less than a week! You should be going to Mount Olympus right now, in fact!" he suddenly closed his mouth, or maybe that was just because his mouth had disintegrated.

"Okay…" I said, and crawled out of my little hole. "So somebody has to go to… Mount Olympus?"

"Oh… Hold on." Jason said. "I think the giants once said something about 'Pulling the Gods up from their roots'." He looked at Piper and Leo. "Right?"

They nodded.

"Oh… right." Nico said. "So… Even if we manage to close the Doors, the Giants might even still destroy the Gods."

"Yeah." Jason nodded.

"So what should we…" Nico suddenly stopped.

_His eyes started to glow._


	21. XXI

**XXI**

**Percy**

Percy's body ached really bad. The strange thing was, he was being hit by gigantic pieces of paper, and all he felt was a dull throbbing in his foot, and nothing else hurt as much-not as much as it should have. He tried to remember exactly how he had gotten here, but all of a sudden he couldn't.

He started to panic. He felt his throat closing up.

He had to focus.

He concentrated on the slapping of the paper. As soon as they realized he wasn't really getting hurt, they started to give him paper cuts. Percy ducked just in time to avoid a rabid Trollface.

Percy really wished he knew anything, when all of a sudden a huge Confession Bear popped up out of nowhere and impaled its paper claws in his eyes.

_But he didn't feel anything really painful._

It really just felt like a little constant throbbing, and not much. But then he realized something.

His vision wasn't exactly high quality. The memes were black or grey, more or less, and Percy only could tell their colors because he had seen full color pictures of them in real life. He realized he'd had a similar experience about a hundred times before, even before he'd gone to Camp Half-Blood.

This was a dream.

He ignored all the Trollfaces, Confession Bears, Harlem Shakers, Smugleaves and Nyan Cats, and concentrated really hard on his mind, really, really hard, and the scene finally changed. And this time, he got really angry.

He was a ghost with large chicken wings for arms. He grumbled. So now, he was the Chicken Man. What joy.

He saw Octavian in a little van, riding towards the magical boundaries of Camp Half-Blood. Suddenly, a huge vortex (or portal) opened up in front of the van, and the vehicle tried to stop. Percy flew in on the van, and he could hear some screams of panic coming from inside it. The van went straight through the portal, and popped out the other side, still on the same road… except for one thing.

Octavian had vanished.

Percy could have laughed out loud, but he realized the portal was sucking _him_ in, as well. He tried to run, but the only problem was that the portal was way too powerful for him to get away. He got sucked in.

He flew though a long tunnel of sparkly lights, and ended up in a cave with stalactites hanging from the ceiling. The cave was big-at least 50 feet tall. Octavian had gotten up, quite shaky from the ride, and was walking around the room. Percy saw shadows rising from the walls. Octavian started to back off. He made a bolt for the exit, his arms trembling, but a slab of rock suddenly appeared, and Octavian slammed against it.

When Octavian regained consciousness, Beanie Babies appeared around the walls. Some had their inners chopped out, and others were fine. A voice echoed around the chamber, "Come forward."

An altar appeared, along with a flaming brazier. The voice then said, "Use this toy. It is from the other camp."

A panda beanie baby floated towards Octavian in a ball of light. Octavian, who was probably too shacked to say anything, silently gutted the bear and sprinkled the inners on the brazier. The flames grew bigger, and as Octavian looked into them, he grinned.

He found his voice again. "Camp Half-Blood is doomed by fate."

"Then write it on the floor with this piece of charcoal." The voice continued. A piece of charcoal appeared on the floor.

Percy didn't like this. This looked too "In Order". First an altar had appeared, then a brazier, then a piece of charcoal.

Octavian wrote on the ground.

_Your Camp is Doomed._

_Sincerely,_

_Octavian._

Percy had a feeling he wasn't bluffing. Camp Half-Blood was destined to be destroyed by the Romans. He flew closer to Octavian, and caught a glimpse of what Octavian saw.

Camp Half-Blood was burning. The Big House was on fire, and people were running. Roman Demigods chased them, yelling insults about Greek Mythology. Suddenly, the scene changed. A huge statue dropped down in the middle of two sides charging towards each other-one wearing purple shirts under their armor, the other wearing orange ones.

_Or else._ A voice echoed through Percy's mind. It sounded suspiciously like Rachel.

The vision ended. Octavian fell to the floor. The vision had shaken him in some way, because he had trembling arms and legs.

Shadows started to appear on the walls, engulfing Octavian. He got up to his knees, a look of absolute terror on his face, and ran. The cave exit opened, and Octavian went for it.

Suddenly, Percy felt a sharp, throbbing pain in his foot. He forced himself to wake up, and he looked at his foot. _Lava_ was crawling up it.

He yelled in pain, and ran away from the lava crawling across the floor. The hole he had crawled into the room from from was now filled with lava. He backed up into a corner, but there was no exit anywhere near him. It was a solid wall behind him.

On the other side of the room, a cloaked man and a fat, chubby guy who was slightly shorter than Percy. The cloaked man looked at him and suddenly Percy felt really sleepy. The man's face kept shifting, and it made Percy really sleepy. He said, "_You will die now_."

Percy was so tired, he didn't even focus. He was about to walk onto the lava, when his mind suddenly spoke to him. _Whoa, Percy. Thou shalt not walk on lava._ He stopped, and looked at the chubby man's face instead, and saw his eyes glowing.

Percy knew something weird was going on. People did not usually have glowing eyes. The cloaked man then said, "_Perseus Jackson, you prove to be extremely annoying to kill."_

Gaia? Then who were the two men?

He realized that he had heard a description like the one this man had before, way before.

Grover had told him about this man. Grover had gotten _hypnotized_ by this man before.

This man was Morpheus.

So Gaia had started to control people too? Well, that sure was great. Now Percy would have to deal with controlled people as well as the Doors of Death. Great. Just great.

He realized Gaia's plan. She had counted on Morpheus' powers to make him fall asleep, then used Hypnos' powers to give him a dream so that he was distracted while the lava caught up to him.

Morpheus (or Gaia) said, "_Sleep."_

Percy fought against the urge. Then a wave hit him. It felt so peaceful, so carefree, so good…

He shook his head out of Morpheus' enchantment, and tried to find an escape path. He felt the wall behind him, hoping to find a door. Nothing. He tried the magma again.

After intense seconds of concentration, he finally commanded the lava. He smacked it against the wall, but nothing happened. He tried a little harder, but the wall didn't give way. Frustrated, he put the lava back.

Morpheus and Hypnos (or Gaia?) snickered.

"_You can't get out." _They said in unison.

A ridiculous idea popped into Percy's mind. He thought for a while. It probably wouldn't work, but he summoned the lava and thrust it at the laughing pair of gods.

As the lava came above them, the laughing stopped. Percy forced the lava that was not being used down the hole, and ran towards the two gods, hoping to find something behind them. His heart sank when he realized nothing was there.

Suddenly, a force pushed him back to his side. A hand seemed to be pushing him down. It turned him over, and behind him, possessed-by-Gaia-Morpheus said, "_Well. Look who failed right when the answer was in front of him._"

What? The answer was there all the time?

Percy didn't get time to think, because Morpheus said, "_Now, SLEEP!"_

Percy fell asleep.


	22. XXII

**XXII**

**Percy**

Percy felt his eyes closing, but he withstood the urge. He still didn't get how the answer had been in front of him all along.

Morpheus' magic was working its way into Percy, and he was slowly succumbing.

He was thinking something like, _Hey. I feel so tired. It would be great to have a little nap._ Of course, the side of him that wanted him to stay awake kept shaking him, but he knew he couldn't withstand it for long.

Morpheus laughed and a sword appeared in his hand. (Percy figured he would just call Controlled-by-Gaia-Morpheus and Controlled-by-Gaia-Hypnos, Morpheus, and Hypnos. Just thinking about it made his heat hurt.

Luckily, Percy's battle reflexes broke in, and he opened his sword just in time to deflect the blade.

Chaos ensued.

Percy and Morpheus fought in the center of the room. Percy was really sleepy now, and that was probably because he had to look at Morpheus' face every now and then, or catch a glimpse of it.

Morpheus was winning, but Hypnos just stood there, laughing so hard his huge potbelly jiggled around.

Percy knew Morpheus was going to win. He had to figure out a way to get out of this cave- and fast. The magma was already starting to flow back.

Percy's eyes suddenly zoomed in on a tiny little hole in the wall, with a bit of light shining through it. Percy only then realized that his head had been facing it when he woke up.

This would be a close call. Percy used the flat of his sword to whack Morpheus across the chest, and Morpheus fell back-but Percy probably only had seconds.

Percy commanded the lava again, which was surprisingly easy this time (which he didn't mind) and made it fill up the hole in the wall. He made it expand more and more. Slowly, the hole grew bigger from the pressure in the water. Percy knew that water like to be free, and so he forced the lava (which he hoped had similar qualities as water) to expand as much as he could.

Behind him, Morpheus started to stand.

Percy was almost finished. He gave some final touches to the hole, and swept the lava away. What he saw shocked him.

It was a huge room that looked completely man-made. The rocks were really straight, and had marks on them- probably drill marks. And in the middle of the room, a huge vortex was spinning rapidly-just like the one that Percy had been sucked into in his dream.

Percy didn't want to jump in. He knew that if he got into that vortex, it would lead him somewhere that he wasn't liked.

Unfortunately, Morpheus grinned and pushed him in while he was mesmerized. As Percy plummeted down, he heard a loud yell, "What did you do that for?"

This was the voice, Percy presumed-of Hypnos.

Percy entered the vortex. Around him, flecks of blue and purple light whizzed by him like they were electric trains. Finally, he popped out of the vortex, onto the balcony of his mom's apartment.

Percy felt strangely relieved, yet apprehensive, like something was wrong. He felt like he shouldn't have come here. It was like the air particles were telling him to stay out of the house.

But he couldn't, obviously, so he crept in, hoping to surprise his mother.

No such luck. Obviously, this wasn't real, but Percy had hoped it was. In fact, in his mother's favorite chair, a woman with palm fronds in her hair was looking at a bunch of… pockets.

Percy decided to take it easy. "Hi."

The woman turned around. Her face was thin and gaunt, with glossy black hair. She wore something like an army uniform, and had a silver dagger in a sheath at her waist.

The moment she looked at Percy, her haughty expression turned into shock-or panic?

"_What are you doing here?_" she hissed at Percy. "_You're not supposed to be standing here!"_

It was weird to be hissed at by an old woman and she didn't seem like a person who would invite him over for tea or try to kill him, so Percy decided to just make a run for it.

Percy ran back out, and he wasn't on his mom's balcony anymore. That was weird, since he had just walked in through it. Now, he was on the side of a river, a river, that Percy realized… was the Hudson.

It was really similar to the Hudson back home (this definitely wasn't home), but when he looked back, his apartment's balcony door opened onto a road that led to the bank. He saw a small sailboat docked on one of the docks. Something told him that this boat did not like him, but it was the only way out. He stepped onto the raft.

In the middle of the raft, an old man was sitting on a fiery throne, which might have once burned very brightly. His eyes were closed. All around him, tiny orbs of light scurried here and there, adjusting tillers, billowing sails.

This was a weird scene, but Percy just decided to ask the old man who he was. He walked up to him, and asked, "Um… Hi. I just wanted to know who…you are?"

The old man didn't reply, but he muttered something like, "Zebras like eating Salad Weasel Cookies."

Ohhh-kay. So this old man wasn't going to be any help. Percy doubted the lights would be any help either, but they didn't seem to notice him. They were engrossed in their work.

That was when Percy realized that the boat was in a terrible condition.

The ropes were snapped. The wheelhouse was in a terrible condition. The boards under his feet creaked, and some were missing. Flotsam was all around the boat, and the lights were doing their best to pick it up. Percy decided to try his luck again. He went up to the lights, and asked, "Hi! I'm…Percy Jackson."

The lights ignored him.

He tried again. "I'm trying to find a way out of Tartarus…"

The lights kept working silently.

"And I'm son of Poseidon."

And with that, the lights erupted into fireworks. Suddenly, they formed a huge circle around him. Their anger seemed to awaken the old man. He got off his throne, albeit slightly wobbly, and walked over to Percy. Percy saw him even more clearly. He had no teeth, had wrinkles all over his face, wore a baggy loincloth and held two things that Percy thought he should know the names of.

Basically, he looked like a senile grandfather.

His voice was the opposite. It was deep, and very harsh, yet somewhat gentle. "So you're… Percy Jackson." He said icily. "Son of _Poseidon_." He said the word _Poseidon_ like it was eggplants mixed with ground beef, strawberry shortcake and crackers, and put in a swamp to rot for 40 years.

"Yeah… is that a problem?" Percy asked. "I just want to know how to get out of here, and who you are. I'm kind of in a situation here, and I need some help…"

He shut up because the old man gave him a look that said, _Shut up_.

"You people were an insult to us." The old man said. "You conquered us and made us suffer. And you don't even know who I _am_?"

"No… sir." Percy felt like he was inclined to be respectful.

"At least you have manners." The old man said. "As for your two questions, I am called Ra, and the only way out of this place, the Duat, is either through a portal or to travel through the twelve gates of the night, and ending up in Egypt."

He made it sound like a video game.

"Okay… so how do I travel through the 'Twelve Gates of the Night'?" Percy made finger quotes to emphasize his point. He had no idea where he was, and he really needed to carry on with his quest.

Ra got really angry, maybe because of the finger quotes, maybe because of the fact that Percy was extremely ignorant, or maybe just because Percy's 'People' had insulted him before. Anyways, the lights also got agitated, and started to vibrate really fast. They burst into flames, so hot that Percy's shirt was drenched in sweat in a matter of seconds. Ra raised his hand, and the lights swarmed Percy.


	23. XXIII

**XXIII**

**Annabeth**

Annabeth ran along the corridor that never ended.

She had been going for ages, and she still hadn't found anything. There wasn't even an exit. But then again, if this _was_ a trap then there would be no exit, as far as she was concerned.

She saw a bright light ahead, and ran towards it, certain that it was an exit.

She was wrong.

She burst out on a hillside, and ruins surrounded her, covered with a layer of grass. She had a feeling she was somewhere not in the U.S. this time, and when she looked down, she could see the sea. A cool breeze blew her hair. She looked over, and behind her, a single wall had an opening in it. She had probably come from there.

_Not bad_, she thought.

As if in reply, a scraping sound came from behind her. The opening she had come from was actually a door, and a dark-brown hand was closing it.

She squeaked in horror. She had to get back in there to get to the Doors of Death, and stop Gaia. But she was almost 5 meters away when the Door snapped shut. She ran to it and tried to open it, but it was locked already.

She heard a huge scraping/booming sound from behind her, and she squeaked in horror. The entire ruins were crumbling. Huge stone walls rose out of the ground. A gigantic structure lifted the ruins out of the ground, and when the walls were almost 20 feet high, a roof appeared above her. She was shut in complete darkness.

She felt around in the darkness, but she couldn't see anything. She took out her dagger. The little light shining off it was just bright enough for her, and she started to look at the walls. The pictures on them looked very Greek.

There was a bull-man with a horn in a man's stomach, and another man was jumping over it. Annabeth had a feeling she knew where this place was. She walked further forward and saw some words written on the wall: Λαβυριντη οφ Ψρετε.

Labyrinth of Crete. Annabeth now was positive where she was. She carefully walked forward a couple of steps, and looked behind her. Immediately, a passage had opened up which wasn't there before. This wasn't the new labyrinth, Annabeth realized, because it had been destroyed by Daedalus. This was the original one, created during Greek times using ancient technology.

And in the center of the Labyrinth, Annabeth knew that she would meet the first ever monster that Percy had fought.

But she had no choice, and she journeyed into the darkness.

The first thing she noticed was the dark. Duh.

But she would occasionally drop her dagger, which seemed attracted to the ground, then groped around for it. It took a lot of time, but after a lot of walking, Annabeth saw the marking of a door on the side of a wall. It was locked. Annabeth walked forward, and saw some words written on the wall: Λαβυριντη οφ Ψρετε. She had just walked a full circle. So the old labyrinth was designed to shift and change, but could only do so in a certain amount of space. This time, Annabeth kept taking right, then left turns, so that she was travelling in a straight line. Of course, she ended up back where she started.

Gaia wasn't known for her cleverness. She was known for how unspeakably evil she was. But Annabeth couldn't help wondering if Gaia had set this as a puzzle. Annabeth would always end up where she started if she used some conventional techniques. Gaia probably wanted to trap her, let her die of starvation or something. Annabeth knew exactly how to defeat Gaia. She would walk in circles on purpose, so the maze would turn her on the right direction. Gaia sure liked to play with her prey, so much that Annabeth assumed that Gaia would have given a chance for her to get back into Tartarus.

Annabeth revolved in circles, always turning right, but she still ended up where she started. She decided to go left. The only problem was that the left side was awfully mossy, and marshy in some places, making it really hard for her to walk.

_If someone jumps me, it'll be really hard for me to defend myself,_ she thought.

But while she was slipping around on an icy floor, Annabeth dropped her dagger, the dim light faded, and she got jumped. A huge black thing pounced on her, and drool dripped on her face.

Her dagger was probably already halfway across the ice by now, and Annabeth couldn't see what was happening. She tried to use her legs to kick, but it didn't work. She tried to feel the thing's skin, and found fur instead.

_What is this thing?_ She wondered. She kept struggling, but the pinning grip was too strong. She felt some sharp things sink into her arm. She was sure they were teeth, because the drool-dripping had stopped. Why was this thing biting her arm? She yelled out in pain, and that startled the creature. It let out a whimper, and the grip on her body loosened. A voice spoke out, "A daughter of _Athena?_ My mistress didn't say anything about this!"

Annabeth had the courage to ask, "Who are you?"

The monster growled. "I'm Fenrir, of course. Now, you die."

He pounced on Annabeth and started to clench his teeth into her hand.


	24. XXIV

**XXIV**

**Annabeth**

Annabeth struggled against the powerful jaws of the creature. Fenrir. She had heard this name before somewhere, in a book, but she wasn't sure. She kept trying, then it hit her-Fenrir was a character of Norse mythology.

Norse mythology?

Fenrir's fangs started to draw blood. Annabeth couldn't get away from him; his grip was too strong. She tried really hard to get away, which only made the fangs sink in more.

Fenrir obviously wanted to enjoy the moment. He started to loosen his grip on her other hand, the hand that hadn't been injured. Fenrir slowly started to bite harder. Annabeth decided to risk it with a tactic that she at first thought was weird, but then began to see how useful it was.

She raised her uninjured hand, put in the thumb and pinkie, leaving the middle 3 fingers. She trembled for a bit, then struck down on where she thought the hip of the creature might be.

It worked.

Fenrir's teeth came out from her flesh, and he staggered backwards, giggling like mad. "How-how did you get- Hee Hee Hee!" he was laughing so hard at the tickle that Annabeth had given him that tears were coming down his cheeks. The icy floor started to melt because of the walking he was doing.

Annabeth was a little surprised. Tickling Fenrir had saved her life. Who would have known that monsters were ticklish?

She saw her dagger a couple of meters behind her and she ran to it. She picked it up, and when the dim light rested on Fenrir, Annabeth saw that he was a huge wolf-man. He had a wolf's body, but he was standing on his hind legs. His claws were as sharp as knives. Actually, they were knives. Fenrir sure liked decorative ornaments.

He sprang towards her, growling. Annabeth dodged to one side, and Fenrir skidded on the icy floor. His claws created tiny ruts in the ice. Annabeth readied her dagger and ran around him, slashing him once for good measure. He clutched his side, and ran after her.

The maze kept changing as she ran. She ran in and out of side tunnels, backtracking at dead ends (which caused her to run into Fenrir a couple of times) and once, she ran down a long, straight tunnel, and she was near the end when she looked behind her and saw a… huge stone wall. The maze had changed to her own benefit.

She looked in front of her and saw a huge chamber, dimly lit by flickering torches. And in the middle of the chamber…was a _very_ familiar face.  
A snort and a ragged loincloth showed her everything.

_Not again,_ she thought.

Annabeth edged around the chamber, trying to not get the creature to spot her.

The Minotaur stood at the center of the maze, rumbling lowly. He turned around…and saw her. He growled in anger, eyes flaring in recognition. Probably recognized her as the girl with Percy on the Williamsburg Bridge.

He charged directly at her.

Annabeth recalled Percy telling her about how the Minotaur could only charge in One Direction, or maybe that was supposed to be 'one direction', not the name of the band.

Anyways, Annabeth waited for the Minotaur to get closer, and ducked. Its horns flew clean into the stone wall, creating two holes in it. Annabeth seized the chance, and jumped up onto the Minotaur's back like it was a rodeo bull, and stabbed into its flank with her blade.

The Minotaur shook her off into the center of the chamber the moment her knife touched its flesh, but the Minotaur wasn't disintegrating. Unfortunately, that wasn't her only problem.

On the other side of the chamber, Fenrir came in through the opening Annabeth had come in from, followed by a familiar wolf-man that Annabeth thought she should know.

They both growled at her and pounced.

Behind her, the Minotaur started to pull free. Just as Fenrir and the other wolf –man pounced, Annabeth jumped free and the two wolves skidded on the floor.

"Who- who are you?" Annabeth tried to keep her voice steady, but failed miserably. The wolf-man grinned, sensing her fear, and yelled, "I AM LYCAON!"

Great. Awesome. Anything but Lycaon, Annabeth thought to herself. Got any silver blades?

They pounced on her again, and Annabeth slashed wildly. Although there was really no hope, Annabeth thought she would be able to at least hit Fenrir once.

Her knife passed clean through them like they were made of air.

Fenrir grinned, and said, "My master gave me the power to only get hurt by silver, nothing else. You can't possibly defeat me now!"

Master…

He meant Gaia.

Annabeth knew this was the end. The Minotaur had wrenched its horns from the wall, and was preparing to charge again, and even if Annabeth could duck in time, Lycaon and Fenrir would kill her. But suddenly, her eyes zoomed in on the Minotaur's horns. They weren't made of the regular stuff that horns are made of, Annabeth realized. They were made of… Silver.

Annabeth felt a little better. The silver must have been used to get the horns to stay on a little bit longer, to make the Minotaur more powerful. But now, it would help her.

As Lycaon and Fenrir charged and the Minotaur did so as well, Annabeth waited until she knew there would be a clean hit, and jumped out of the way.

Two squelches told her everything she needed to know. When she opened her eyes, all she saw was two puddles of gold dust.

The Minotaur glared at her and charged at her again, but this time Annabeth was ready. She jumped up onto the Minotaur's head (how she managed to do it, even she didn't know) and impaled her dagger into both of his eyes.

The Minotaur screeched and disappeared.

Annabeth picked up one of the silver horns and put it in her bag. She had slain the Minotaur, and she wasn't about to forget this victory. She had trained for years at camp to defeat it, and she had done it.

But there was the question of getting back out.

That was answered almost immediately, as the floor opened under her and she fell down. Inside the room, a huge vortex swirled with sand and things like that. Annabeth almost remembered something like this from a book that she had read a couple of months ago, called _The Red Pyramid. _The vortex sucked her in, and she flew through a tunnel of lights flashing and flickering. When she popped back out, she was back in the mortal world.

Only this time, she was in a park, and all the signs were in two languages- English and Chinese.

Where was this?

She looked over at the other side of the harbor and saw a skyscraper made using triangles.

She knew where this was.

Hong Kong.


	25. XXV

**XXV**

**Nico**

Nico was looking at a movie.

He saw a dark-haired girl. A pulse of shock rippled through the other him's body, and he watched as the person punched her.

_Why am I doing this? _He thought._ She's my friend._

But he did it anyway. Jason came over to help Piper, and Nico felt another shock course through him. _Why? He thought. Jason's my friend too._

Nico watched as the other him punched, and Jason crumpled as well. Nico laughed at it, even though his brain was yelling at him, _These are your friends! HELP THEM!_

He was still laughing when he felt a hand touch his shoulder. Nico shrugged it off, and the screen turned around, and Nico saw a girl with chocolate brown skin, yelling something that he couldn't quite make out.

_Hazel._ The girl was Hazel.

Hazel grabbed the shoulders of the person on the screen and started shaking him. At the same time, Nico felt his shoulders being shaken. Nico got really annoyed, and he watched as the other him punched Hazel.

_She's also my friend, _he dimly thought.

But suddenly, he felt a giant thud in his back. The force was so powerful that he screamed in pain and blacked out.

When Nico came to, he was lying on the ground.

"Where am I…?" he asked himself. He lifted his head. Around him, his friends were all gathered around him. Only then did Nico realize that he'd just knocked out three of his friends. "What… what happened?" he asked.

His friends' looks told him everything he needed to know.

"Oh, no…" he said. "What did I do?" he asked, looking down at the three unconscious figures on the ground.

"Your eyes started glowing… and then you punched Piper, then Jason, then…" Frank started.

"Yeah." Nico sighed. "I saw what I did, thanks. But it was like I was watching a movie or something."

Leo's eyes widened. "Oh, no… Eidolons." He turned towards the group. "I saw another 'me' firing the ballistae."

"This is bad," Hazel said. She probably had been the one to awaken him. "Why would they attack Nico?"

Then Carter asked, "What _exactly_ are Eidolons?"

"They're possessing spirits." Nico said, trembling. His head started to feel uncomfortable, like a hot spire was being drilled in. "And I've got one of them in me."

Leo suddenly added, "So those Eidolons really _were_ lawyers- and great tacticians too. They possessed Nico because he wasn't on the ship and he wasn't part of the "Crew" we made them swear not to possess, knocked out Piper so that she couldn't charmspeak them, and so Nico would have to board the ship in order to escape from them, so then we would have to get to the Doors of Death without his help."

"Since when did you become so smart?" Jason asked. Everyone whirled their heads around. Jason was standing up. "Nico, if you're really possessed by an Eidolon, then you do need to get back to the _Argo II_."

Carter asked, "But I thought you needed to guide them. Now who's going to do it?"

"I think… Hazel." Nico quickly thought. "She's a daughter of Pluto, after all. I'll try to give her the best directions I have, and well… we'll have to make do. You'll need to be careful. The temple's more confusing than you think. Even I don't quite know the way."

Then Nico thought of something else. "Oh… the Giant talked about taking Mount Olympus and "Destroying the Gods at their roots". I think we need to do that too."

Coach Hedge suddenly yelled, "Then its settled! Me, Nico, Zia and Walt will journey to Mount Olympus with Piper, then you guys head over to the Doors! Great!"

"Who told you to make up the rules?" Nico muttered, but he knew Coach Hedge was right. Someone had to do it.

After Nico had given the directions to Hazel (who got confused after the 4th instruction) over and over again until she got them, he, Zia, Walt, Coach Hedge and Piper (who was still unconscious) walked back through the forest, back to the ship. Nico occasionally would have to stop and force the Eidolon back into his mind, and it hurt like crazy. Coach Hedge didn't help much, either. He kept forcing them to go on, pretty much leaving them without much energy to walk, let alone talk.

But finally, after a non-stop 8-hour walk (with minimum breaks) they found themselves back in Athens, where the rioters were still hogging the street. Once again, they took a detour, but then they found themselves in front of a gigantic statue of Talos. As Nico leaned on it to keep his balance and catch his breath, the statue _started to move- just like the sphinxes had._


	26. XXVI

**XXVI**

**Nico**

Nico jumped back from the moving statue. As it creaked and groaned, Nico knew that this statue was an automaton. But this automaton was an Eagle. Suddenly, he remembered something.

"_Prometheus' Eagle has escaped to the world. It is in hiding, but will bring destruction to your friends. You should really give up."_

Nico snapped out of his memories. Where had they come from? He guessed that they had come from Tartarus. He couldn't remember much from Tartarus, except for a constant throbbing in his head…

The Eagle cawed once, saw them, and flew down from its pedestal. "Scatter!" Nico yelled. The Eagle crashed onto the ground, its claws creating fractures on the concrete. It was about 10 feet tall, made completely of bronze. The Eagle first saw Nico, and flew towards him.

Nico ducked just in time, and the Eagle's claws flew about 2 millimeters above him. He stood up, and ran back to Coach Hedge, who was putting Piper in an alcove of trees. "Coach!"

Hedge looked at him, and yelled, "Yes, I know! The Eagle that tortured Prometheus! Just FIGHT IT!"

Nico nodded and ran back out. Walt was a little busy dodging the golden barbs that the Eagle would occasionally shoot out of its wings, and Zia was shooting gigantic fireballs that would have dealt a lot of damage had it met its target. Unfortunately, they were slow, and the Eagle was fast. Plus, Zia was losing energy. Nico joined in the fight. He couldn't really help much, considering the fact that his death powers really could only work on enemies that stayed on the ground, but then he saw something that shocked him.

Behind the Eagle, a bunch of protesters was slowly marching their way, shouting insults in Greek. He could just understand it, and that meant double trouble.

He dodged a barrage of tiny golden missiles and yelled to Zia and Walt, "We have to lead it away! We can't let the mortals get hurt!" they noticed the protesters, and their eyes widened. "Okay!" Walt yelled.

Just then Coach Hedge ran back out, carrying Piper again. "I heard. Let's go!"

They ran. Unfortunately, the Eagle was fast, and it easily outpaced them. It landed in front of them, and cawed. It flapped its wings, and in the narrow street, it shattered about a thousand windows.

Whoops.

But behind them, the protesters were marching their way. The Eagle was standing in front of them, and it saw the mortals. Uh oh.

It took flight and flew towards them.

Nico suddenly got an idea. "Zia, when I say jump, jump and try to grab the talons."

"Okay."

Nico waited until the Eagle was about 10 feet in front of them. One Mississippi, Two Mississippi… "Jump!" Nico yelled, and he and Zia jumped up. They each grabbed a big claw.

"All right," Zia said. "What do we do now?"

Get onto its back!" Nico yelled. He looked back at Coach Hedge and Walt. "Get to the ship!" He yelled.

Coach Hedge heard him and ran.

Mean while, Zia was trying to find some handholds. "How are we supposed to gat up?" she yelled over the wind. Her hair was flying everywhere.

"I don't know!" Nico yelled back. "Try looking… Oh, over here!"

Nico had found some monkey bars. They were ladder rungs positioned vertically. Nico grabbed them and climbed, and at the end, he found the ladder.

Zia followed him until he reached the back. Unfortunately, the Eagle was really hot and it was quite hard. Finally, they made it to the head. "Okay, Zia!" he yelled. "Release a fireball!"

"Here?" she asked.

"Yes!" Nico yelled back.

Zia started chanting, and pretty soon, she had a fireball. She lobbed it at the Eagle's back. Unfortunately, the Eagle was travelling so fast that it zipped past the fireball, which was still in midair when Nico looked back.

Time for plan B.

"Zia!" Nico yelled. "Can you just catch your hand on fire?"

"Yes!"

"Then do it! Make it as hot as you possibly can." Nico made space for her. He didn't really want to get scorched. Zia chanted again, and this time, she had a white hot hand.

"Now press it against the hide!" Nico instructed. She did as she said. Instantly, the Eagle slowed down, but there was only a few meters until the bird would hit the crowd. "Hotter!" he yelled to Zia. She cranked up the heat so much that he had to scoot practically to the tail to avoid getting burnt. Zia was fine, probably because of a protective shield.

They were about 2 meters away now. "Zia!" Nico yelled! "Hotter!"

And just as the Eagle was about to dive into the throng of rioters, Zia summoned a blast of flame so hot it melted the Celestial Bronze. The Eagle cawed really loudly, and it slowed down. And suddenly, the bronze turned impossibly hot, and the Eagle exploded.

Nico and Zia flew through the air. "Zia! Grab a streetlight!" Nico's mind went into instinct and he grabbed a streetlight, swung around and landed on the ground. Zia had done the same. He turned around and was face-to-face with an extremely angry mob of people.

Nico couldn't understand modern Greek well, but he understood it well enough to understand the mutters that the Greek people were saying while pointing up at the sky, where the mechanical Eagle had exploded.

_Secret Spy Plot, _Nico understood. _Two kids… sent to infiltrate us._ The mob now thought that the mechanical eagle was a spy drone and he and Zia were spies sent by the Greek government.

Why did things have to be so complicated?

"What are they saying?" Zia asked him.

"Something about the Eagle being a spy drone and us being spies as well." Nico replied.

Suddenly, somebody yelled in Greek, "GET THEM!"

The gigantic angry mob ran towards them. Nico readied his knife to give those mortals a shocking.

Zia saw what he was doing, and gasped. "You're- you're going to_ kill_ them? That knife's sharp, you know!"

Nico looked at his knife, and replied, "No, this is made of divine material. It'll pass through mortals like they're made of air."

"Great. I hope you're telling the truth."

But things got quite complicated.

The Greek people took out kitchen knives.

"Uh-oh." Nico said. "RUN!"

Not a moment too soon. A knife swung through the air just inches from Nico's back. He and Zia pelted off through the streets. Luckily, Nico had recognized a plaza a few blocks back, and he doubled back, using a different street. He ended up in front of a fountain.

He recognized this fountain from the route they took out of town. He ran to the opposite side of the plaza and selected the street that looked the most like the one they had taken, and pretty soon, he was running up the hill. Unfortunately, the crowd was only a about 20 meters back, and were catching up fast. Nico and Zia ran close to the ship, within shouting distance, and Nico yelled up, "LADDERS!"

Coach Hedge, luckily, knew how to operate the ladders and they slowly descended. Nico jumped and grabbed one of the rungs. "ZIA!" he yelled. She grabbed another rung, and Nico yelled, "UP!" The ladders slowly rose up.

But the crowd was only a couple of meter behind them. "TAKE OFF!" Nico yelled. "HURRY!"

The ship stayed where it was for an agonizingly long time. The crowd gained ground, and they were only a couple of meters away when the ship suddenly started to rise. As Nico and Zia kept hanging onto the ladder, the Greeks started to gawk at the magical flying trireme. And they got _really _angry.

They all threw their knives.

Nico dodged most of them, but some of them impaled themselves in the wooden hull. Nico just hoped that they hadn't hit any essentials.

Slowly, the ladder rose, and when Nico flopped down on the deck, they had left Athens-and the angry, knife-throwing mob-behind.


	27. XXVII

**XXVII**

**Frank**

Nico had given Hazel (hopefully) the right instructions, and he had left the cavern, leaving them behind. Frank was watching them leave, when Hazel piped up, "We should hurry." She looked nervous. What Nico had told her had shocked her hard.

Hazel continued, "What Nico told me to do, it's going to be really hard." She started to relay the instructions.

"First, Nico told me that when we enter the cave on the opposite side, we're going to have to choose one of 13 passages."

"13 passages?" Leo said. "Is that some kind of coincidence?"

"13's a bad number, but I doubt it's a coincidence. Whoever created this probably did it on purpose." Jason said.

"Nico told me that the passages change all the time, and we should choose the one that smells most of Death." She said. "That's easy. I can sort of smell Death. Nico taught me how. But Nico clearly stated that with the temple, when you choose a tunnel, one person always gets left behind. A bit like a magic spell. And he doesn't know where that one person goes."

The group quieted down. One of them had to stay behind? That didn't sound fun.

"But we'll see who gets left behind. For now, let's just go down the list of instructions Nico gave me. Then, we'll get to a underground chamber. Nico said something about fighting an enemy… he didn't know what enemy we'd be fighting."

Frank had a good idea of what they'd be fighting. A very good idea. And he was dreading it.

"Then, we'd have to get through legions of monsters to get to the Doors of Death, which we would have to close. Unfortunately, he did say that the path to the Doors was really hard to navigate, and it was full of dead ends, and was constantly shifting, like Daedalus' Labyrinth. And he knows what he's talking about, trust me." Hazel continued.

Frank knew that there was one burning question. How about Percy and Annabeth? If they closed the Doors in Tartarus, or if they closed the Doors in the House of Hades…

"What about Percy and Annabeth?" Leo voiced all their thoughts.

Hazel was really shaken up. "Well-"

"Wait- Who are Percy and Annabeth? Carter asked.

"They're our friends who fell into Tartarus, and we improvised by saying that they would go close the Doors of Death from the Tartarus side. There are two sides, you see, and each side needs to be closed individually." Frank gave them the short version.

"Oh," Carter, for once, looked shocked at what the Greeks and Romans had gone through. "And you can't rescue them, by the sound of it."

"Yeah." Leo said. "But how do we get them out?"

"We don't." Hazel said. "Nico told me that in the underworld, there's an entrance to Tartarus. Percy was there before, and so was Annabeth. If they could find the Underworld again, and get out again…"

"But the way I heard it, they used crushed pearls to get them out." Jason said. "So they would still have to find them, wouldn't they?"

"Yeah, but at least there's a hope that they could escape. We just have to hope." Hazel sounded close to tears, and Frank patted her back. "It'll all be okay, you see. We'll find them. They'll be fine."

Suddenly, a shocked yell echoed through the cavern. Everyone turned towards the Entrance. And in it, a very familiar-and annoying figure stood. A scrawny boy, with a pale face that was even paler than normal, was panting hard.

Frank felt rage course through his veins. He was the person who had tried to manipulate Hazel at Camp Jupiter, who had rallied the troops to Camp Half-Blood (Frank had never seen it) and a teddy bear murderer. Not the best person to meet if you are described as a cute, huggable teddy bear.

Octavian staggered into the cave unevenly. His eyes darted around the group nervously. His original, proud self had been shed, leaving behind a nervous, scared body. His eyes darted around the group nervously.

Frank couldn't stand his anger. He jumped up, and yelled, "Octavian, you-"

Hazel put a hand across him to quiet him down. "Octavian, as much as we hate you, it's strange that you're in the Ancient Lands- the ones that you were forbidden to go to."

Octavian suddenly stood there like a statue. "WHAT?" He shrieked. "You mean this is Greece?" he put his hands on his head. "I'll be exiled from the legion!" he yelled in dismay.

"So how exactly did you get here?" Leo asked.

"Well-I was just-" Octavian paused for a second. "I-I was in a van, heading towards Camp Half-Blood-" He paused again. "And I suddenly-saw a-a swirling vortex- of sand." He paused. "And I got sucked in and found-myself in this cave-" He paused. "And I found a teddy bear and a brazier-" He shuddered. "And when I sacrificed it-I saw- Camp Half Blood in flames- and I-I also saw…" He stopped talking for a while, and when he spoke again, he said, "The Athena Parthenos- dropping between our two forces."

Frank knew that they meant two different results- one Camp Half-Blood destroyed- or the two forces collaborating. They had to make sure the second vision would happen. But Octavian hadn't finished yet.

"Then I saw shadows on the walls. Shadows that belonged to no-one. But they didn't seem like they would harm me. I-I ran out." Octavian finished his story, shuddering.

Leo commented, "Those shadows were probably Taraxippi-Ghosts that frighten horses. Not much of a big deal, unless you have a superfast horse."

Everyone subconsciously looked at Hazel. She had Arion, after all.

Suddenly, Octavian noticed Carter and Sadie. "Who are you?" he asked. Some of his old self had come through again, and his voice wavered a little bit less than usual.

"We're Carter and Sadie, blood of the Pharaohs, Slayers of Apophis." Carter immediately replied.

Octavian jumped. "You- what are you talking about?" he was shocked. Octavian probably did know about Egyptians, considering his reaction. "You- you're _Egyptians?_" He said it like he couldn't believe it. "So not only are there Greeks, there are Egyptians."

"Well!" Leo said. "We need to hurry up and get to the back of the cave, where- where one of us gets left behind."

Nobody spoke. Everyone was dreading the worst. Frank knew that all of them were afraid for themselves, and for the group.

"Well, there's nothing we can do about it," Frank said. "We should just go on and see."

So they walked up to the tunnel at the back of the cave. Leo's face was beaded with sweat. So was Hazel's. "Here goes…" Hazel walked in. The group followed.

They would have died over 5 times if it hadn't been for Nico's instructions. First, the gigantic chasm, which Hazel crossed by walking on an invisible bridge, then the pit trap, which Hazel filled with diamonds, then the crushing walls, which Hazel waited to close and open again before gong through. But when they reached the pathways, Hazel simply sniffed the air and said, "This way. I'm pretty sure it's this way." She pointed towards a door on the left of the cave.

She didn't sound very sure.

Everyone took a tentative step forward. Nobody wanted to risk getting left behind.

"Alright, Hazel first, because she's the leader." Frank said. "Then Jason, then Leo, then Carter, then Sadie, then…" He looked at Octavian. "Should we send him after me?"

The entire group nodded. Leaving Octavian behind sounded like a brilliant idea to Frank. He'd been the cause of all that suffering that his friends had to endure.

When all of his friends had gone, Frank and Octavian were left.

Frank said, "Now, you stay there…" He inched towards the opening. But Octavian suddenly got a look of absolute terror in his eyes, and he ran towards the cave.

"NO!"

Hazel's scream was so full of hatred, madness and sorrow Frank started to cry. He knew he was doomed. When Octavian rushed through the cave, the opening suddenly disappeared, leaving behind a wall. Suddenly, the cave started to rumble. The ground opened up, and Frank fell into the gaping pit.

"NO! NO!"

Even through the earth, Frank could still hear Hazel's panicked, angry and desperate screams.


	28. XXVIII

**XXVIII**

**Frank**

Frank was falling into a pit of lava.

He was very scared, considering that he was about to die, and his mind went into shutdown.

Suddenly, a voice called out to him. _Frank, transform, you idiot!_ His mind had saved him. But this voice didn't sound like Frank. It sounded like… Mars.

Anyways, he transformed into a Stymphalian Bird almost instantly. He stretched his wings, and regained balance. Suddenly, he realized how hot it was. He was really sweating now, and Frank knew that in a couple of minutes he would dehydrate. He immediately flew over to a small cave in the side of the pit. Frank landed, and looked back. He realized that the hole that he had fallen through now was a cave ceiling again.

He walked along the tiny hallway, and when it became bigger, he transformed back into a human.

Now, torches were lining the walls. Frank suddenly realized that the air had suddenly become super cold. Weird, considering that the lava pit was only about 3 meters behind him.

He walked on in a long corridor. He noticed that the temperature constantly decreased every couple of meters, and Frank immediately knew that something was wrong. He turned around- and gaped.

A beautiful woman stood behind him. Her skin was unnaturally white, had long, straight black hair, and her eyes were coffee brown. Frank was immediately dumbstruck.

But in a corner of his mind, he was yelling, _Stop! She's probably a demigod-slaying goddess who wants to kill you!_

She said coldly, "Frank Zhang. You have come."

_How does she know my name?_

She swiped her hand, and immediately the room was covered with frost. Frank, unaccustomed to the sudden cold, started to shiver.

The woman then waved her hand, and a beam of ice shot out.

Luckily, Frank leaped out of the way just in time. He skidded on the ice floor, numbing his hands and making his cheek hurt. He barely felt anything; the ice was so cold. When he got up, his entire right side felt freezing cold. When he stood up, he felt horrible, but there still was one question he wanted to ask. "Who are you?" he asked the woman, hoping that his voice was menacing enough.

The woman moved to the other end of the smiled cruelly, and answered, "Khione."

Suddenly, he realized that it was really cold in the passage. He looked back the way he had come, and he realized that the entrance was blocked now… and there was a substance seeping over the walls, emitting white smoke…

"Dry ice." Khione smiled evilly. "Try not to get frostbite!"

She disappeared.

Frank felt extremely annoyed at himself that he hadn't brought a jacket, but then again, this was summer. He knew the dry ice would catch up fast, but he was shivering. Pretty soon he would faint from the severe cold. He needed to transform- preferably into a polar bear.

Frank concentrated- not easy to do when you're shivering and losing consciousness. The dry ice kept racing forward, and just when he thought it would catch up, he finally transformed into a polar bear. He ran.

Frank ran along the now totally ice-covered passage. He was awed by how far the ice stretched, but he knew that behind him, the dry ice was advancing very quickly. He knew that he wouldn't be able to keep it up for long, and he had to find a way out of this. Unfortunately, there was no exit, and the corridor seemed like it would go on forever.

Suddenly, he found himself in a huge chamber. Behind him, the dry ice was catching up, and the big problem was that there were about 10 different passages leading off into different passages. Khione was standing in the middle of the room.

"The warmest path is the correct exit." She said. "But you can't sense heat, can you?"

Frank sensed the room getting colder. He knew that snakes had heat vision, which could help him find the correct way, but it was freezing in here. He'd fall asleep in minutes.

But he had no choice. Pretty soon, he would become a human polar bear Popsicle. He wanted to think this through, but he couldn't. He transformed.

Instantly, he felt so sleepy, like he'd been awake for two full days and he was now on the most comfortable bed on earth. He yawned- or tried to, at least. He didn't seem to be able to.

His eyes drooped. He was so sleepy… he couldn't stay awake at all. He started to curl up…

Suddenly, the part of Frank's mind that was probably still awake yelled, _WAKE UP!_

Frank immediately jolted back to reality. He stared behind him. Through his heat vision, he could see the cold coming from the dry ice that was seeping along the walls. He looked forward and immediately saw one of the passageways; it was so warm, he could clearly notice the difference. The heat vision was different from a heat-vision camera, but he knew that it was the correct way.

Unfortunately, as soon as he tried to slither towards the door, he was hit with another wall of sleepiness. He could barely think about anything apart from sleep…

But suddenly, he woke up again, with his mind screaming, _RUN!_ He had no choice, or he was going to die.

He transformed into a polar bear and ran.

When he entered the passage, he immediately started seeing glowing red lights on the walls of the tunnel-probably lava or something. Behind him, he could still feel the ice getting closer.

It was so hot now that Frank had to turn back into a human. He ran as he changed. He could literally see how the levels of his sight changed. As he ran through the exit, he skidded to a halt.

In front of him was a huge pit of lava.


	29. XXIX

**XXIX**

**Carter**

I ran through the tunnel, the scene still flashing in his mind. Why had Octavian run through the door? Frank had probably fallen to his death- and Octavian was just standing there, terror on his face. He wasn't ashamed- but shocked.

"Why did you have to run through that?" Hazel yelled. She was close to tears. "Frank's probably dead now!" She punched Octavian; she was so angry.

"I-I-" Octavian couldn't say anything. He was so shocked, all he could do was stand there, lost for words. He looked at us, his eyes filled with disbelief.

"But- but-" I just stood there. I had been the last person to go through the cave. I could have stopped Octavian… I could have managed to stop him from running!

After staring at each other for a long time, we finally started to walk slowly through the narrow corridor. I felt so sad. Frank, of all people, whose help we needed so much. What if there was a giant gaping pit or a really high cliff face? Frank would have been really helpful in those situations.

But just as I was thinking about those possibilities, one of them suddenly came into existence. A giant, gaping pit loomed in front of us. We stopped.

It was about 100 meters across, and seemed to go down forever. The edges were covered with sharp rocks and other things that could potentially kill us if we fell, and the only exit was an opening the size of a doorway

"How do we get past that?" I wondered.

Hazel, still shocked by Frank's demise, shakily said, "Yeah. I've got it."

She whistled.

"This should bring Arion here." She said.

"Who's Arion?" I asked.

"He's the fastest horse in the world." She explained, "Pegasus is more famous, with his wings, but Arion is the fastest."

"But we're stuck in a cave. And Arion can't drill through rocks." I commented.

"We'll see." Hazel said. "I don't know either, but if he can, that's great."

Suddenly, on the side of the cave, a bit of rock started to shudder- and a horse burst through, chewing up the rock like it was sand.

"Arion!" Hazel yelled. She hugged him. She was so happy. She patted his snout. Arion whinnied.

"I'm sure we'll get you more gold," Hazel said. "Now-"

Arion shied away from Sadie and I.

"No, Arion. They're friends. Now, we have this little cliff face that we need to get over. So, how about a ride…"

Arion kneeled down, and Sadie and Leo went on. Arion ran around the pit at an extremely fast speed, ending up on the opposite side in less than a second. Luckily, he was big enough for the opening, and he safely deposited both of them on the ground.

"Alright." Jason said. "My turn!"

Pretty soon, Sadie, Leo, Jason, Hazel and Octavian had made it across. Hazel had objected to Octavian crossing, but I had made her change her mind. We couldn't let our emotions get in the way. But he had crossed himself, because Hazel didn't really trust him to backstab us.

Finally, it was my turn. I boarded Arion, and he ran. But as soon as he started, I knew that trouble was coming. Shadows started to appear on the walls.

"Taraxippi." Octavian said, with a scared tone.

Arion immediately slowed down. He reared- which, when done on a sideways cliff, is not a good thing. Arion stumbled and fell into the pit.

"Press your hooves against the walls!" I yelled over the rushing wind. Arion yelped in terror and flailed his legs with no avail- he was too scared. I forcefully pressed him with my body against the wall, and his hooves managed to make contact. Sparks flew- yes, sparks- from the friction his hooves were making. Finally, after a full 10 seconds falling, we managed to start running back up to the opening.

But then, Arion bolted again, and when I looked up, I saw why. Huge boulders were dropping down on us. They probably had gotten destroyed by the ghosts. Arion got swarmed by the Taraxippi, and he reared again- this time, sending me off his back and both of us hurtling down into the darkness.


	30. XXX

**XXX**

**Carter**

Honestly, I don't remember what happened after Arion fell into the pit. I blacked out, and I just woke up on the shores of a lake. I then realized two things: one, this was Sunny Acres, and two, a ship that looked suspiciously like Ra's sun boat was gliding across the lake. On it, swirls of lava and giant fireballs were being tossed about.

It was a fight. I wasn't exactly sure who was fighting whom, but I saw some hints: The lava being manipulated like Katara from _The Last Airbender _was waterbending with lava, and it looked like a medieval war cannon was firing liquid metal. Now that I look back at it, I'm thinking: Duh! But trust me, I'd just woken up and I was really groggy. How was I supposed to make complete sense of this?

Then, Tawret came up behind me. "Hey! Have you come to see Bes? You dropped out of a huge portal."

Huge portals were just another part of life for us Kanes.

She was fading a little, probably because the gods were trying to distance themselves from the mortal world.

"No." I said. "Not really…" I stopped talking because she had noticed the fiery boat. "Isn't that Ra's sun boat?"

"Yeah." I replied. "I think so."

Suddenly, the boat swerved to one side, and started to slowly drift over to us.

And then, it slammed directly into the shore.

I had just enough time to raise a defensive wall. Lava steamed everywhere. Smoke billowed.

When it started to clear, I saw two silhouettes in front of me. One was channeling the lava, and the other one had little spheres of light surrounding him, and he was throwing fireballs.

When the smoke fully cleared, I saw who they really were- and it shocked me.

Ra and- Percy Jackson.

I opened my palm, and the glowing Eye of Horus stared right back at me. I stared back at it, and then yelled, "STOP!"

They both stopped. Ra stared at Percy, then at me. "Why are you stopping our battle? This Greek insulted us!"

"Carter?" Percy asked he opened his palm to reveal the Eye of Horus. He showed it to me.

I nodded. "So… you fell into Tartarus?"

"Yeah." He said. "I'm trying to find the Doors of Death and find Annabeth."

"I heard that. Has anyone, erm, talked about the little incident that happened?"

"Nope, I don't think anyone said anything about it." He said nervously. "How's the crocodile doing?"

"Not bad. The little kids seem to like it." I replied.

"Okay…" Percy was on edge. "Ra seems a little angry with me."

"Ra, Percy's a friend. We might need him, okay? Stop fighting!"

"Fine." Ra sighed. "I might have overreacted a little."

"Good." We'd both originally decided not to tell each other our stories, but this time I felt that maybe we should. "Well…"

I started. Percy listened intently, catching every word. When I got to the part when we had to venture deep into the Duat to stop Menshikov (or Menshicow, as we'd started to nickname him), Percy gasped. "So you mean that we were that close to the total destruction of the world, and we didn't know a thing?" When I got to the shadow of Apophis being captured, Percy actually sighed in relief. No idea why- he'd been a reasonably impartial person up to that point.

When I finished, Percy blew a sigh of relief- even though it was obvious we had won. "All _I_ remember on the news is something about a huge dust storm raging over Giza. Thank the gods- the entire world might have collapsed." Then he started. He went on about Luke, the Master Bolt, the Sea of Monsters, Atlas, the Labyrinth, and Kronos, and finally he ended off with Camp Jupiter.

Now it was my turn to get shocked. "So you mean the world was also that close to destruction?" he asked. "And we didn't know about it either?"

I checked his palm. "I'm an idiot." I said. "You said my name and I said yours, and now we've wasted our one use."

"Doesn't matter." he said. "I think we were supposed to work together for this one."

"So, should we carry on? I have a feeling that we'll manage to get out of here through the end of the twelve houses." I said.

"Oh, so those gates were the gates to the houses?" he asked.

"Yep, and you just totally disrupted the day-night cycle." I replied.

"Oh."

I pushed him on. "Just go!" I yelled. "We need to hurry! Gaea's getting stronger!"

"You think I don't know that?" he yelled, but he pushed the water, and we slowly drifted off the shore. Ra sat back down of his throne, albeit grumpily, and the servant lights went to fix the boat. And we continued along the river of lava.


End file.
